Even though 21-year-old Brooke Bentham is firmly entrenched in the burgeoning South London music scene, her music sounds as though it has been dusted with sand from a Californian desert. With a sound that recalls Angel Olsen and First Aid Kit, her music soars and dips though the ravages of a shattered relationship with arresting lyrics and fluid guitars.
These affairs of the heart plague Bentham on This Rapture, her second EP following last summer's The Room Swayed. Staggered drumming is slumped over the shoulder of Bentham's winding and impassioned vocals on this EP, where she desperately tries to make a relationship work on "Have to Be Around You", ending in a blitz of shimmering synths, before accepting resignation on the dejected "Why We Fall".
Just when you feel like you've figured out Bentham's sound, closing track "Solo" throws a curve ball. Bathed in fuzzy, distorted guitars, this icy track sees Bentham declaring, "Take me out, and I won't talk to you", with the intense, grunge-inflected guitars marking the jagged edges of the the point of a break-up where everything ultimately becomes futile. This Rapture is an unflinching exploration of a failing relationship, that doesn't come up for air and bypasses posturing. It sounds like Bentham has a lot more to offer.
