With the release of the single "Play Me A Christmas Song", Stephen Dowd manages to bottle the very specific, blue-hued silence that falls over a living room once the wrapping paper has been cleared away. It is a curious thing, really, how a melody can act less like a sound wave and more like the smell of a candle that was blown out five...

Alright, buckle up, because Nissu's Memories just teleported me… somewhere. Nissu, a Brazilian-born, Dublin-based pop artist, has dropped this six-track EP, and it's like opening a particularly well-organized, yet emotionally chaotic, scrapbook. https://open.spotify.com/album/6Kbr8PFQrTu0J2GmK8o5uz?si=AwyU0he-RWWnjgcxHeMQDw The EP, Memories, supposedly functions as an “open diary,” they say. He tackles love, friendship, that whole pandemic thing, and the general rollercoaster of being a person. But does it achieve being truly...