Music Review // Steph Clifford "cocoon"

 

The titular track from Steph Clifford's upcoming album "Cocoon" packs as much punch as it does sentiment.   Musically, "Cocoon" is one of the type of songs that I feel like all musicians in the year 2025 should be making because it feels like it takes aim at several different genres and that makes it difficult to pin point into one specific genre.   As it begins slow and somewhat dreamy, there is an obvious pop way about this song by Steph Clifford.  You feel like you might be listening to something by LDR because it just feels cool in that way.

As "Cocoon" goes on there are these sort of trippy guitar parts which make me feel like we're inside of a daydream.  This pushes the boundaries from that pop genre to more of a rock one, something along the lines of a slowcore/dreampop type of sound.  There isn't really a specific artist to compare Steph Clifford with in rock though, as both the jangle at the beginning of the song and twist and turns at the end can remind me a bit of country music as well (but just ever so slight).

Lyrically Steph Clifford sings about something that we don't hear enough in music or in the world in general and that's empathy.  Lines like "You're the one it's happening to" and the chorus of "and I don't have a god / if I did / I'd beg them to let you live" just feel like the singer is watching someone die before their eyes and they're helpless to stop it.   This could be what it's like when a loved one has cancer, but I'm sure these lyrics can also be taken into your own personal reflections as well.

What I like most about this song is that it has the lines in the chorus of "I don't pray but if I did / I'd pray for you a cocoon, a velvet womb" which feels almost like a way of keeping someone else safe.  There's a way which the sound in this song kind of brings you in and encapsulates the listener in a similar sense.  The slow burn isn't as intense as it is solemn, but it really makes you take the subject matter to heart.  This song might be about what is happening to someone else, but you can feel it as if you are both people going through it.