With a voice that deserves more than a fraction of the reverence that’s falling around Lola Young, Clara Moschetta is a melodic mesmerist in her debut EP. Worthy Conversations Around a Kitchen Table.
Her ability to take the phenomenon of retro piano pop ballads in the opening single, Cut Up Fruit, and turn it into an aching paradox of gospel that resonates like a confession that swells through crescendo is enough to necessitate a new book of revelation. The hooks don’t just serve to pull you into the momentum; they hit you in a far more emotional capacity, especially when Moschetta allows her vocal notes to tremble in vibrato, shaking the pain into the synapses.
Water Safer Than Land amplifies the artful aura that surrounds her production, exhibiting her as a figure that can console you as much as Lana Del Rey. Yet, Moschetta doesn’t rely on aesthetics or the armour of nostalgia; she cuts with contemporary knives. Through a sonic signature that’s sharp enough to tear through the indie pop mediocrity with the intensity of the instrumental builds, the steel-wrought tension of the trip-hop percussion becomes a tribal calling beneath her voice as it soars with grief and reclaims the sanctuary she always deserved, but never got the key to.
Father Never Tells Me catches you off guard by proving that you haven’t heard the epitome of Moschetta’s vulnerability quite yet. With a more diaphanous production to pour her pain into, the weight of the emotion sits heavy, while the jazz-inspired quiescent instrumentals temper the melancholy of the piece that pleads for recognition, for the softness that resounds within the release. Already forming the basis of her “Father Never Tells Me” Project, where strangers share the unspoken words they wish they’d heard, the track offers a rare, unfiltered intimacy.
Regret is an art pop vignette that leads with the conversational immersivity of Y2K pop icons in the vein of Kate Nash, but Moschetta puts her own beguiling stamp on the style with the way the instrumentals would be equally as befitting to a ballet performance. Her voice commands the performance as she uses the bitter sting of regret to add fuel to the release in one of the most profound singles we’ve heard this year.
Ending on a high, the final single on the five-track EP, TV, juxtaposes the upbeat, avant-garde-adjacent instrumentals—hand claps, horns, and honkytonk pianos and all—with a striking exposition on body dysmorphia that will undoubtedly resound with everyone beyond borders and the animosity that breeds between generations. Already striking a chord with listeners through her grassroots campaign on TikTok, TV places Moschetta at the heart of a conversation many are still too afraid to start.
As a whole, the debut EP is a storm of artful assertion. It dares to confront what we often leave unspoken through fear of repercussion. Moschetta became the voice that we often pray we’ll find within us. We don’t need to make her an icon; she’s made one of herself by the virtue of her own candour.
Worthy Conversations Around a Kitchen Table will be available to stream on all major platforms from the 17th of September.
Discover her on YouTube, and connect with the firebrand on Instagram and TikTok.
Review by Amelia Vandergast