Posts Tagged ‘emotional turmoil’

17th April 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Either the members of Karobela – who are jointly credited with the lyrics – have had some really shitter personal experiences, or they’re keen when it comes to observing some of the more negative aspects of relationships and social interaction.

Whereas previous single, ‘Afterthought’, which came out in December, dealt with being dropped, forgotten, kicked to the curb, ‘Love Letter To No One’ explores, as they put it, ‘the profound emotional turmoil caused by the contemporary issue of ‘ghosting’, capturing the lingering heartache it leaves behind’.

In name, ‘ghosting’ is very much a contemporary issue, and certainly, it’s easier to vanish virtually than in real life. It’s hard to ghost someone who works in the same office or whatever. But in the pre-Internet days, people would just stop writing, stop phoning, and you couldn’t even search on Facebook to see if they were still alive. But one difference in that is the time delay, in that you’d wait days, weeks for a letter, and the time span of the uncertainty was something which elongated gradually: there were no messages unread, no disappearing profiles. And as we’ve come to depend on immediate back-and-forth, even a minute waiting for a message to be picked up can feel like a lifetime. And it’s this angst which is the subject of ‘Love Letter to No One’.

It’s a step up in terms of ambition for the band, being the first track in a projected four-part narrative following the romantic experiences of a female protagonist, and musically, it’s got some beef to it, with a chunky riff and strong vocal delivery that does convey emotional turmoil. In many ways, it’s rock music of the kind that you don’t hear so much at the moment. That said, it’s driven by a disco-tinged beat and has more of a dance-leaning breakdown in the middle.

With a chorus that’s all hook, and tightly packed into a fraction over three minutes, ‘Love Letter to No One’ is a work of precision, and a first-rate single cut.

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Karobela Promo shot 2

5th May 2022

Christopher Nosnibor

The pandemic may be over – or not, depending on your viewpoint or your government – but there’s no question that the pandemic affected us all in some way, shape, or form, and that as much as people are getting on with their so-called ‘normal’ lives, we’re not all fully over it. Some of us may never be.

‘The Day the Drum Stopped’ was penned during the height – or depths, depending on your perspective – of the UK pandemic lockdown, and captures the instantaneous psychological spasm of the moment everything halts abruptly. ‘The Day the Drum Stopped’ is perhaps another way of phrasing ‘the great pause’, and it was a strange time to say the least.

For many – not least of all musicians, those in hospitality and retail – everything stopped. For others, who continued to work from home, while also trying to manage home-schooling, the pause was less pronounced, marked more by the absence of people and traffic in the street when venturing out for the prescribed daily exercise or trip to the local supermarket in the hope of scoring both loo roll and pasta. But no question, it was strange, a plunge into the unknown, the unpredictable, and this was a cause of major anxiety for so, so many.

Kristina Stazaker has articulated this succinctly and in a most accessible fashion on her new single, propelled by some sturdy percussion and ‘builds up to a powerful ending where the drums restart and the electricity of life flicks into action again’. It starts with a solid march, before loping away like a galloping horse, and there’s optimism there, as Stazaker remains positive that ‘the drums will come back again’, and it’s a rush and then… it stops, and you’re left, vaguely nonplussed, wishing there was more. Which seems like life, really. Cracking single, though.

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 Artwork - Kristina Stazaker