Borrowed Emo Moulds Weaken The Boldly Honest Core On Komorebi's 'No Deal'

New Delhi-based artist Tarana Marwah aka Komorebi has just released the new single 'No Deal', embracing the aesthetic of mid-00's goth and emo rock, not just in her dark styling in the music video but also in the sombre piano melody that kickstarts and underlines a combination of rock and pop with just a tinge of electronica. Given the song's exploration of tumultuous childhood and inter-generational cycles of trauma, it's an apt pairing. Emo and goth's primary audience, after all, was pre- and early-teens' first expression of their frustration against the world they found themselves growing up in.

The problem arises that multiple times through the song, the style feels more forced than something naturally stumbled upon over the course of writing and expression. This isn't a new wave of emo revivalism but pushing ideas into an old mould. In the process of it, the borrowed melodic structures become passé and the writing often overly simplified. For instance, the first four lines rhyme themselves with "store", "four", "door", "core", and the second verse delivers its message in such a matter-of-fact fashion that it is a few rhyme erasures away from being prose (the verse even starts with "The thing is").

Even in sections like the chorus or the outro, where the delight in her staple style of cinematic electronica hooks begins to come through and even pairs with rock's energy, barely-cooked lines like "Feelings // Got too many feelings // Watch out for my feelings // Wish that I could cut them out" and unwarranted borrowed ideas from the 00s indie rock like vinyl scratches limit the efficacy.

The lack of nuance (which she has proven herself thoroughly capable of in the past) in these lines undermines the instances where Komorebie does hit the mark. Both the performance and the writing on lines "I was a child, my whole world was you // But you were drowning and I guess you wanted me to drown too", for instance, capture well the release's biggest saving grace: its ambitious and unabashed honesty.

Watch the music video for 'No Deal', made with Parizad D, below and follow Komorebi for more.