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Nov 16, 2023 By Caleb Campbell

New York-based singer/songwriter Taylor Pearlstein writes aching and thoughtful indie folk, crafting plaintive dispatches from her Bushwick bedroom. She’s been quietly sharing new singles over the past several years and next month she’s set to return with her debut EP, Perfect Blue, out on December 1st.

Pearlstein says of the record, “This EP is about self delusion, creating worlds and over-romanticizing to the point of our own destruction and misery. The orchestrations are intentionally oversaturated and even distorted at points, balanced by other bare and naked moments. Much of the EP vocals and guitar are one take in a studio, open to street sounds. I wanted the experience to pull listeners in and out of reality and fabrication.”

Pearlstein has already shared a handful of new singles this year, “Nashville,” “Sandman,” and “Back Away,” and today, Pearlstein is back with another new track, “The Difference,” premiering early with Under the Radar.

“The Difference” is at once both dark and beautiful, delivering morbid lyricism amidst Pearlstein’s celestial vocals. Her voice floats and sways through the track, accompanied by pastoral wisps of guitar and weeping swells of strings. Pearlstein inbues the track with an alluring gothic romanticism, especially as the track approaches its end and the instrumentation falls away, letting the full weight of her lyrics hang一“I will hold my breath / I will wait this out in my death / If drowning is sweet as a kiss / Maybe I won’t know / Maybe I won’t know / The difference.”

Yet, for as sweeping and beautiful as her lyrics are, Pearlstein sees them as little more than a hopeful delusion. As she explains, “Perfect Blue gets its namesake from this track, the third single and penultimate track on the EP. These five tracks take us on a disorienting journey through the dark side of over-romanticization. I spent much of my younger years relishing in the agony of heartache, borne from realities entirely my own. Looking back, I can see it was my way of feeling powerful and desired, building these worlds of “perfect blue”, like I talk about in “The Difference”. Here, for the first time, I am looking around and realizing I have created this all myself: the beauty, the pain, the love. I look around and see myself in it all, and no one else.

Perhaps the most important lyric refers to drowning. Somewhere I read a sailor describing it as brief and sweet as a kiss. And I thought that must either be a merciful truth, or a lovely lie to soothe a hopeless seafarer. The over-romanticization of drowning in this way perfectly encapsulates the madness of this story I tell. “If drowning is sweet as a kiss, maybe I won’t know the difference” is pretty beautiful, sure. But it’s mostly pitifully delusional.”

Check out the song below. The Perfect Blue EP is out everywhere on December 1st.