Hamtramck, Michigan-based artist MARA WANNA consumes across her new album, how dreadful — navigating grief and growth with inventive, hook-driven artistry. Blending dreamy synths, textured vocals, and dynamic rhythms, the album shifts effortlessly between lush pop accessibility and intense, rhythmically inclined soundscapes, crafting an enveloping listening experience with a variety of satiating twists and turns.
“The Beginning” opens the album in enthralling form, resembling a vibrant sound collage in its heady mixture of dreamy synths, ghostly vocal harmonies, and textural swells. Expressive vocal layers culminate in a fierce lead presence, complemented by colorful synths and pulsing drums. “How can you prepare for calamity, damn near insanity,” the vocals let out, then setting up for a captivating tonal shift — where a more dazed, spacey glow emanates within the “just look around you” beckoning. The production is diverse and magnetic throughout, shifting between effervescent pop and moody intrigue — reminding fondly of both Robyn and Sophie at points.
The album doesn’t let up in its excitable, hook-ready artfulness — continuing right away with ensuing track “Everything That I Love.” “My wrists are sore from scrolling, how pathetic,” the vocals unveil with modern clarity, then retracing personal blemishes and how “my body makes me sick.” The glistening, contemplative verses move into a sludgy ardor as those visceral admissions pair with the darker soundscape unveilings. The album’s opening one-two punch dazzles in showcasing a tendency to seamlessly navigate between lush pop approachability and rhythmic, intense fervency.
Another standout track, “Even a Memory” is a melodic earworm as well — though especially immersive in its erratic, haunted lyrical bite. The track plays like a jagged exploration of post-pandemic displacement, blending self-destructive spiral — “I might be off my meds” — with defiant reclamation. It oscillates between stagnation and frantic motion, punctuated by the haunting realization: “I hang on to the past / Because it feels fine.” Its second part is another dynamic tonal display, traversing from cut-up vocals and hazy twinkling within smitten sentiments — “your voice is a lullaby” — to the buzzy synth complements and “at least I still have my music” post-relationship commiserations; the framing of another one as “my home” and eventual unrequited emotions prove heartrending.
The album attains a ballad-ready sense as well in “Sorry Party,” where perseverant lyrical themes and embracing of personal freedom infuse within a piano-ready subduedness; the vocal layers and rhythms ignite a more energetic charm, though the track ultimately succeeds in its alluring vocals and dreamier string-laden conclusion. The subsequent “4 Eternity” also excels with a serene atmospheric pull, resembling an alternative to the jagged chaos of “Even a Memory” for a more transcendental and resolved perspective following personal tumult: “If this is where our story ends / Let us meet at home again.” how dreadful is a resonating success from MARA WANNA, stirring in both emotively gripping themes, eclectic tonal reveals, and inventively hooky prowess.
