LOUR Gasps for Air Under in the Melancholy Alt-Pop of ‘Shway Shway'

stripped-down rendition of Fairouz’s Kan Ena Tahoun, Palestinian singer-songwriter, LOUR, has crafted a unique musical identity for herself - one that strikes a balance between the deeply intimate and the expansively resonant.

It’s a balance that’s perfectly demonstrated in her latest single, ‘Shway Shway’, a track that the artist has described as her most personal yet.

Produced by LA-based Petro AP - who boasts the likes of Renée Rapp, Grace Enger and Meg Smith on the list of artists he’s worked with - the bi-lingual English-and-Arabic song sees LOUR confront the emotional toll of a broken home, the pre-chorus line “The house is under water / And you never taught me how to swim” capturing the viscerality of fractured family dynamics best. 

Instrumentally, the song frolics like a nursery rhyme, the melancholic plods of a glockenspiel carrying the verses through to a chorus that bursts and blossoms with a more urgent beat pattern that, if isolated, could easily be the foundation of a lo-fi number. It all comes together to deliver a sometimes haunting, sometimes brooding, and occasionally cathartic experience in the way the instrumentation climaxes -  high-speed surges of pure, exhilarating freedom, though they don't quite get to their destination, they don't quite escape the turmoil.

The release delivers a definitive statement from the still very young career of LOUR, the kind that we might look back at in a few years and say that it was a turning point of sorts. Having released two singles earlier in the year - March’s ‘23’ and April’s ‘Kill Them Both!’ - ‘Shway Shway’ arguably offers the clearest picture of the Jerusalem native’s stylistics. 

From Lebanon’s Kris Pena, to Saudi Arabia’s TamTam, to Egypt’s Kiiko - there’s a growing use of the label alt-pop across the region and its diaspora. The beauty of it is that the term is incredibly flexible, almost nebulous, in its meaning and the coast is clear for LOUR to craft a place of her own in this most fluid of musical landscapes.