Music Review // Nikita Lev "Suspend"

The intrigue surrounding an artist such as Nikita Lev seems to be grand if you're paying attention.  After the release of the singles "Killer Her Mind" and "No One's Gonna"- which both open up this EP- it feels like Nikita Lev has influences which somehow don't go together but when the music comes out it still works.   With beats and dramatic strings, I think of this as being pop at its roots but then there are other elements to suggest it is not quite pop.

While I'm not sure how the process works for musicians and just assume it's different for everyone, I imagine a pop musician taking some guitar parts and putting them down in a rock way, but then adding elements to kind of make them more friendly and upbeat- catchy in that sense, which is how they become pop.   With Nikita Lev, I feel like she's starting with those pop elements somehow and deconstructing them to the point where they sound like dark pop but also sometimes closer to rock than pop.

"So Clear" is a song which makes this apparent, as it can be thought of as dark pop but there are also these elements which I can only describe as magical.  The song has the lyrics: "I don't have to tell the truth / I can lie / A little bit / There's a haze around you / Do you even exist" which also makes it not feel so much like pop and I just love that I can hear artists like Lana Del Rey and Fiona Apple in here.

Perhaps the most interesting song is "Your Dove", which closes out the EP.  It has these sort of retro vibes to start, but then it slips into this nice distortion which can almost become like screeching with the electronics.  This makes me think of someone who would be on "The Crow" soundtrack more than on pop radio, but the way that Nikita Lev plays both sides without really committing to either is the brilliance in this sound.