OTHA - TIRED & SICK

Oslo's Otha crafts an anxious, stream-of-consciousness dance floor banger on "Tired and Sick."

OTHA - TIRED & SICK

Absolutely anything can happen on the dancefloor. Everyone's got their own reasons for wanting to lose themselves in a dimly lit club on a Saturday night. Some are there to party with their friends, make out, hook up, catch a buzz. Others are there to get over a stressful work week, lose themselves in the beat and forget about people for a while. Introverts and extroverts are likely to rub glowsticks on the dancefloor, sometimes to disastrous results.

It's possible to love dancing and dance music while genuinely loathing the people you're surrounded by. There are all different kinds of electronic music lovers.

Oslo's Othalie Husøy, the producer behind Otha, has been crafting dancefloor anthems for introverts since 2018. She must've been going to clubs this whole time, because it sounds like she's hit her breaking point on "Tired and Sick," which Otha describes as "an outburst song." It's decidedly less dream than her first two well-received singles, "I'm On Top" and "One of the Girls," which seemed to levitate on a bed of air, like a neon-lit hovercraft. Husøy seems to have lost the ability to critically distance herself. She sounds down in it, fed up and fit to burst.

The fast-and-furious immediacy suits Otha well. "Tired and Sick" is an electro booty bass banger, with Husøy robotically rapping out her frustrations over a rigid early '80s bassline. It's the dance version of a punk anthem, spitting and sparking behind the scenes, wanting to throw smart drinks in the air and never speak to anyone ever again.

We here at We Are: The Guard feel you. PSA - it's perfectly acceptable to just want to close your eyes and forget about your troubles for a while at a club. Lord knows there's enough to forget about, these past few years.

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.