"Regret/Forget" by Noah Seleno

Out this morning is the brand new Noah Seleno single "Regret/Forget": her first since "Lips" in 2022 (and you can also check it out on ‘Hot Music Live Presents Volume Nine')

Quite apart from the rarity of reviewing a song featuring an oblique stroke in its title (usually an indicator something interesting), Noah's releases come along less frequently than blue moons which adds to their anticipation and rewards the listener all the more when they do reach us.

One factor is that she has to balance her musical career with her studies, but as far as creativity goes, she is one of those perfectionists who may frustrate us slightly while we wait, but whose artefacts delight us all the more on arrival when we realise just how good they are & how much love & sweat have been expended on their creation.

They also inspire much pondering & profound engagement: I've previously described them as being "…. very strong songs, highly idiosyncratic & occasionally a bit strange…" but that's because Noah's lyric writing is primarily poetic is style and hence much more allusive than determinedly mundane. There are meanings behind them which she believes in deeply and she's presumably not setting you a challenge to figure them out: it's just that these reflect her own thoughts & she has worked hard to express herself in her own words.

That said, on this occasion her title doesn't so much offer clues for decoding as provide a clear & simple prompt for what follows. As she told me, it's a song "..about the dissolution of a friendship and the grief and regrets it left behind.." so we're talking a deeply personal experience for the writer yet one all listeners can understand, identify with and empathise with. Details would be both intrusive & redundant: this is about emotions not tabloid gossip.

The artistic tension is heightened by the delivery though. Founded as the song is on true human interactions & responses, Noah, as always, injects elements of the mystic and supernatural through both words & music (it's about living people but ghosts come into the picture too). Noah seems most at home in an alternative dimension at times: most notably a dreamworld as she is here.

Once again she takes her already unique singing style and adds to the originality of the delivery by adopting an unusual strategy: a sort of breathless, staccato evocation. Her music, again as is her signature, is that simplicity of instrumentation played clearly & honestly yet in that hypnotic style which underscores the words.

One doesn't often get a Noah Seleno single (though she promises her fanbase that she intends more regular releases) so all the more reason to relish "Regret/Forget".