GIRL IN RED - DEAD GIRL IN THE POOL

Norwegian singer/songwriter girl in red reflects on the dark side of party life on "Dead Girl In The Pool."

Have you ever partied just a little too hard? If you're a fan of rock 'n roll, club music, and sucking the marrow out of life, the answer to that is probably 'yes.' If so, you might be familiar with some of the shadows of rock 'n roll excess. There's the moment when the night turns sour when shadows grow fangs, when drink and drugs stop numbing you to your problems and give them a bullhorn instead. There's all the misunderstandings, the out-of-control emotions, the wanton recklessness and destruction. After a rager, a house looks like it's been devastated by a natural disaster. That should tell you something about the dark side of the party life.

girl in red's Marie Ulven takes those feelings and spins them into a surreal, nightmarish, metaphysical meltdown. That also happens to be a crazy infectious beachy indie pop banger.

GIRL IN RED - DEAD GIRL IN THE POOL

"This is the morning after/the house is such a disaster/But there's someone outside/that caught my eye," sings Ulven in the pre-chorus, before revealing the twist ending. "There's a dead girl in the pool," she intones in a deadpan, over a bouncy, jaunty upbeat guitar. That's not the end of it, however - the bottom drops out, revealing yet another level of infernal trippiness.

"I'm the dead girl in the pool," she sings, over and over. It sounds glib but the image is chilling. It's like living the last day of your life, over and over and over again. It gives "Dead Girl In The Pool." a haunting quality that makes you want to relive it, over and over again.

Music has a way of amping up the disorientation, making it even more unsettling than a lot of other artforms. This is particularly true of recorded music, which arises out of nowhere, unattached to its source. It's like a ghost or a memory. "Dead Girl In The Pool." will give you goosebumps and shivers. It could be sunstroke or it could just be shivers of uncanny, malevolent dread.

J. Simpson occupies the intersection between criticism, creativity, and academia. Based out of Portland, Or., he is the author of Forestpunk, an online journal/brand studying the traces of horror, supernatural, and the occult through music, fashion and culture. He plays in the dreamfolk band Meta-Pinnacle with his partner Lily H. Valentine, with whom he also co-founded Bitstar Productions, a visual arts collective focused on elevating Pop Culture to High Art.