Coffee Dreams by Nika Mo

Written and recorded and mixed and mastered on Whadjuk Noongar boodjar. I am very grateful to the Whadjuk Noongar people, and their elders past and present, for the continued custodianship of the land on which I live and breathe. Sovereignty was never ceded.

—————

‘I had some dreams, they were clouds in my coffee.’ Karaoke renditions of Carly Simon.

—————

Nika Mo presents this small offering as an EOFY sale (yes, this is the follow-through of an ill-advised pact proposed by collaborator and local Turbo Emo, Lyndon Blue), with outstretched palms; the promise of an album to come; a slobbery frisbee ‘tween the teeth; a pointless pit stop en route; steam rising. We return from the strange fantasy realm of ‘Cloven Hoof in Honey’ to the sobering reality of heartbreak.

‘Stairs in the Nighttime’ gets closer to indie pop than Nika Mo has ever done before, with an expansive outro that sticky tapes sentimental iPhone recordings to shaky accordion breaths and oblivious arpeggiators. Devastation with an exasperated eye-roll.

Stairs is the crowd-approved hit single, a kind of likeable misery; while No Cigar is the B-side underworld of much more private musings, never before performed live. This second track builds upon Moses' signature confessional lyricism with abstracted images of grief, idle potential and uselessness; ‘wasting blood and bone on all those plastic flowers’. Delivered as an intimate piano ballad in the midnight livingroom, the rhythmically free arrangement spirals, rises, circles, paces, pauses, ponders.

And rounding out this neat little bundle is ‘Away From You’, a much deeper cut from the archive. While Stairs and Cigar were written and recorded across 2020-2021, ‘Away From You’ dates back to 2016. Never meant to be released, the final track offers the young-faced hope and security of first love. An abrupt shift to romantic optimism, but underscored by an echoing, beautiful if eerie nylon. Reminiscent of Vashti Bunyan with something of Sufjan Stevens’ ‘Carrie and Lowell’ glimmering within, too. This track is available to the TRUE fans who purchase the EP (but it'll likely show it's face on streaming platforms before long, too).

This little two track (with a "secret" bonus track (and a radio edit)) hints at more to come. For those who’ve attended Nika Mo shows across 2021-2022 and might be missing the band renditions of these particular tunes — never fear. There's more to surface in the near future, along with other unheard dregs from the deep.

Making and performing on Whadjuk Noongar boodjar. Sovereignty was never ceded.

Melancholy-folk that makes the Perth mundane sound somewhat poetic.

fb & ig:
@nikamomusic