TRACK REVIEW: Amber Mark - Softly — Music Musings & Such

TRACK REVIEW:

Amber Mark

PHOTO CREDIT: Nelson Huang

Softly

9.4/10

The track, Softly, is available from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1stAYxwLFHA

RELEASE DATE:

12th November, 2021

The album, Three Dimensions Deep, is available to pre-order here:

https://shopuk.ambermarkmusic.com/?utm_umguk=www.youtube.com%2F&utm_campaign=AmberMarkThreeDimensionsDeep20210915&utm_content=&utm_medium=social&utm_source=YoutubeDescription

ORIGIN:

Tennessee, U.S.A.

RELEASE DATE:

28th January, 2022

GENRES:

R&B/Alternative R&B

LABEL:

PMR Records

__________

HERE is an artist…

PHOTO CREDIT: Matilda Hill-Jenkins

who I have been following for a few years now. I have already spotlighted Amber Mark, and I have been a fan of her music ever since. Even though I associate her more with New York, she was actually born in Tennessee. She released her mini-album, 3:33am, back in 2017 (which, I think, is when I first heard her) - and she prepares to put out her debut album, Three Dimensions Deep, on 28th January. I am going to come to her new song, Softly, in a bit. It is another incredible cut from an artist who I have a huge amount of love for. I want to explore a few other subjects before coming to that song. I want to start with Mark and her relationship with her mum (who died in 2013). In a Pitchfork interview from 2018, the songwriter was asked about her mother:

“Pitchfork: You grew up traveling the world with your mom. What was your relationship with her like

Amber Mark: Mainly, she was always like, “Make sure you do what you love.” She was very against having office jobs and doing any of that. That’s why she always traveled around and went where work was and still did her passion. Musically, I’ve always taken a huge influence from all the places she took me, especially India, and especially because I was a child, because you’re absorbing things a hundred times more than you would be be at this age now. She definitely would’ve lived the rest of her life out in India.

She may have been spiritual, but she was also German, so she was very, like, “You have to do this, and you have to do that.” And she’s very stubborn, which I probably get from her. She never really gave good advice, I will say. It was always like, “Just surrender to the problems. Everything will be fine. Life is just a dream.” But I always was like, “No, mom, this is happening right now. I need to deal with it.” But the life that we lived was something that I, to this day, am so thankful for. At the time, when I was younger, a lot of people thought it wasn’t very good parenting, because of the fact that she took me out of school and homeschooled me. Especially in America, a lot of people didn’t really understand. So, I think she would sometimes have a hard time with that, and I would sometimes have a hard time hearing that about my mom.

But now I realize that there are people who dream of traveling to the places I have been to, and they are much older than I am. So it’s such a blessing for me to think back on all those times that I got to live my childhood out in all of these cultures”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Nicky Riley Bentham

I did not know that Amber Mark has travelled so much in her life. She has had quite an itinerant time and experienced a lot of different cultures. Belin is somewhere she spent a lot of time. Amber Mark is twenty-seven now. She lived in Berlin when she was a child. In a 2020 interview, Mark discussed what it was like living in the German capital:

“Living in early to mid-2000s Berlin must’ve been an interesting time. I feel like that was the moment when all the Americans and artistically-minded Europeans started moving to Berlin and obviously, house and techno was always a phenomenon there. What was it like being there?

Amber Mark: I didn’t like it, honestly. This is when I started getting into music. You’re in 8th grade and you’re always thinking of what you’re gonna be when you grow up. That’s when I started feeling that maybe I wanted to pursue something in music and I always wanted to play the piano or some sort of instrument.

My mom couldn’t afford a piano at the time and we were always traveling a lot so this was the first time we had settled down in years. She bought me a guitar and I had started teaching myself how to play guitar and learn basic chords. I joined the school choir and that was my first experience with singing and performing. That’s when the gears started turning about doing music.

Were you in the former East Berlin or West Berlin?

Amber Mark: I was in Pankow, so it was East Berlin. The area I lived in was not as cool. I always remember being like, “why can’t we live in the fancy cool hip area?”

It’s always interesting seeing the divide between the two. West Berlin feels almost glitzy compared to the general East Berlin grayness.

Amber Mark: It’s really funny though. When I moved back to New York and was like 17, I was working at this cafe and I’d tell people like, “Oh, I lived in Berlin.” They’d be like, “That’s so cool! I love Berlin, I always go there.” Because they’re these fashion people, you know. “Love going there, the parties there are great.” I was like, “Really? I did not like it.” But I was 12”.

Going back to her mother, it must have been hard losing her at a young age (Amber Mark was nine when her mother died). Billboard chatted with the remarkable songwriter when she was promoting her 2018 E.P., Conexão. The way Mark talks about her mother’s death and how she processed it really struck me:

“How do you handle having to talk about grief and your mom over and over again with journalists like myself? I imagine it’s not easy.

It gets easier the more you do it, but I’ve never been private about feelings about losing my mom. I’ve always been open about losing my mom. Everyone goes through it - everyone’s been through it. There are obviously certain details that are graphic that I reserve, but on the emotional side of things it helps people. I’m happy to be able to communicate with people who have gone through it - it makes me feel good as well. Yesterday I had a podcast interview and we were talking about my mom and the whole process of her passing away. I said something and he responded in this metaphorical sentence and he started tearing up and eventually he confessed to me that his dad was in the process of passing away. Then it got really emotional and I started crying. It was this whole emotional thing that I hope will be edited out. Sometimes it can be hard to talk about, but I think it’s important”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Nelson Huang

Working my way to her work now, it is prudent to look at the remarkable E.P., Conexão. One of the tracks from it, Love Me Right, is among my favourite Amber Mark moments. I think, with everything she releases, you get an insight into her life and soul. That may sound obvious – don’t all songwriters do that?! -, but there is something particularly powerful when you hear Amber Mark sing. The Line of Best Fit spotlighted her in 2019, where she discussed the extraordinary Conexão:

“In 2018, Amber released Conexão, a magnetic four-track EP that recounts a relationship from first bloom to wilt. It graduated from the themes of her first record, exploring a different relationship under her carefully detailed eye. The personal nuances of “Love Me Right”, so intimate yet universal, told the story of one of Amber's romantic relationship in its fading moments, where everything started to crumble and the pieces wouldn’t fit back together. “I really thought at the time that I wouldn’t experience that feeling of such intense love after my mom passed away...” Amber admits. “But then I came to the realisation that I would experience it again; it would come and be just as intense, but in a different form, a new shape.”

Conexão shifted her perspective of what love was in a world without her mother, and she found the heartbreak, the romance and spirituality of best translated through her music. “Even towards the end, when [my partner and I] were really fighting a lot, I would never really talk about it because I felt embarrassed. I felt like a failure.” Music was, for a young woman struggling to come to terms with romantic loss, her form of therapy. “It felt like I was understanding what I was doing and dealing with it, and letting go. It definitely felt like a relief.” After the relationship ended, those lessons she learned in her therapy sessions came into play. By the time she reached the final track of the EP, “All The Work”, she wrote about confidently rejecting an ex who'd crawled back to her after he saw she was prospering. “At the time you really think that you can’t experience something better than that. Going through all of those things helps you to learn and grow and understand yourself and come closer to internal happiness”

I just mentioned the song, Love Me Right. VICE spoke with Amber Mark in 2019. Aside from touching on some of the songs, we discover how Mark discarded some songs for Conexão, as they were not deep enough for what she wanted to convey:

“Soon she’s talking about moving home every few years as a child with her nomadic mother, relocating everywhere from Germany to India, Nepal and Miami before going to high school in New York. This global attitude permeates the songs on both 3:33AM and Conexão. The former was indebted to India and house music. The latter widens its scope, vibing with Brazilian bossa nova and loungey R&B. “I'm glad you caught the Latin stuff,” she says. “I studied a lot from bossa nova, and I used to listen to it a lot as a kid because my mum would play it. I even wanted to learn Portuguese in high school so I could sing in it.” Rather than pilfering samples and cultural musical signifiers, you can tell that Amber delves the sonic histories she’s exploring. That use of bossa nova, for example, isn’t an aesthetic lunge into the Latin explosion in the Top 40—instead, it feels nuanced, careful.

You hear Amber deploy the genre’s emotional arsenal on something like title track “Conexão.” It’s a song all about intimacy that exudes the rhythmic sensuality and longing of bossa nova pioneer and founding father João Gilberto, as well as his and his daughter Bebel, both of whom were huge influences on the record. And then there’s a thrumming cover of Sade’s “Love Is Stronger Than Pride”, which began life as a gift for her sister and that slots gently into the EP’s ‘boy problems’ story arc. Sade herself co-signed Amber’s version: “I got an email with a note from her saying, 'Wishing you all the success. I love what you've done with the song,’” she gushes. “That was some life goals.”

Coming out from under the dark subject matter of 3:33AM wasn’t easy, though. Amber struggled to match the emotional levity of writing about the loss of a parent, with Conexão. “I was just throwing songs away because they weren't deep enough or good enough,” she accepts. “I wanted it to be bigger. Eventually, I had to come to terms with the fact that, after writing for a few months, nothing was ever going to be more meaningful than that EP. It had to do with losing my mother. I just realize that nothing, emotionally, will ever top that first record. And I think nothing should, really”.

I am staying with Conexão a bit longer, as it is her only E.P. To me, one of her most important releases. DIY conducted an interview in 2018. We got some more detail behind a remarkable E.P. One thing that I wondered when listening to the E.P. is whether it was hard to write so honestly and emotionally following 2017’s 3:33am:

“And your new EP ‘Conexão’ is out now - how long has it been in the works?

It's probably been finished for about a month and a half.

And it’s a relief to have it out there, we assume…

Yes, absolutely. One of the songs is really old, so it's great to have that out finally. I'm really nervous for people to hear it, but excited too.

Did everything come together quite easily in the writing process?

It was a little hard at the beginning. I put out [debut EP] '3.33 AM' and that was so meaningful, and I felt like I needed to put something out next that was even more meaningful, and more emotional, so I spent a couple of months really struggling with that, and getting frustrated with myself. Then I had this epiphany, and came to the conclusion that nothing is ever going to compare to what '3.33' meant to me, because of what the subject was, and I came to terms with that and let that all go.

I just started writing what I was feeling. I was kind of against that too though, because, as it turned out, it was about love. I don't really like to talk about that! I was quite hesitant doing that. But people have really appreciated my music because of how honest I was with my feelings, so I ended up just writing about it. I tried to make it as non-cheesy as possible though!

With such honest, experience-driven writing, was it ever a worry after ‘3.33’ that the well might run dry

Oh it was definitely a worry! I'm writing about my life, and I did stop and think 'Oh, what if there's nothing interesting to write about?'. I feel like, especially when with '3.33 AM', I had a few years of processing before writing it all down, with 'Conexao' it's just been one year of writing. I had some more time to experience life. I'm kind of a dramatic person, so there's always drama in my life! I try and spin it positively though! I don't think I will ever run dry, but the fear is real”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Eric White

It must have been different writing on Conexão, compared to her amazing mini-album. In an interview with office, Amber Mark explained how the process was different working on the E.P. and the mini-album:

“Your new EP Conexão is great. What was the recording and production process like? I was delightfully surprised to hear that you produce your own music.

Yes, same thing for this one. I didn’t mix it or anything like that. I record vocals in my room with a USB mic, so we re-recorded some of the vocals that were clipping. But other than that, the production has all been kept the same and then mixed with an actual professional who knows what they’re doing, and then mastered by somebody else. The production, melody, and all the writing was done by me.

How was this process different from the 3:33AM EP? Did it feel more put together?

No [laughter]. I think it’s less put together, honestly. For my previous EP, I had such a set idea on what I wanted to write about, and it was also a three year process that included everything I’ve gone through and stuff like that. So I kind of had three years to think about it, whereas for this I had one year. I think I also stressed myself out and gave myself a lot of anxiety because I was like, “Okay, Amber, you need to make something that’s better than what you previously did, it needs to have more meaning…”

So I put a lot of pressure on myself, but I realized that nothing is going to top the 3:33AM EP in terms of meaning because it deals with the loss of my mother. So then I let go of all that pressure and started just writing about what I was going through, and it ended up being very romantic.

Did clubbing influence the EP at all?

I didn’t really touch on that on this one, but I do want to write more about fun and not-as-serious things. I’m always like, “This is very meaningful, blah blah blah.” But again, this one is kind of more dramatic. For me, it’s harder to write about happy things than sad things. I want to challenge myself and write about going out and getting wasted [laughter]. It was hard for me to write this EP because I feel like love songs and stuff like that can always be really cheesy, and it has to be done right. I was very hesitant to put all this stuff out because I’m talking about love and being in a relationship, and I find that to be a little cheesy at times. It definitely took some balls to put this out there”.

Many might assume that Amber Mark writes a lot with others and there is a host of producers. A lot of artists do work this way, bit it might not surprise many to know that she writes and produces a lot alone. Going back to the VICE interview, Mark talks about music as being like therapy. She revealed why it can be preferable and less stressful working on her own:

“Still, when Amber found herself writing a bunch of songs about her relationships she recoiled slightly. “I'm very against talking about love. I mean, it was what wanted to be writing about internally, but my mind was like, ‘Ugh, this is so cheesy.’ It really took a lot for me to accept it, but I wanted to be honest with myself.” In person, you can practically see how she toys with those sides of herself. One-on-one she’s shy and a little nervous, laughing awkwardly and often a bit unsure whether her answers to my questions are right. She’s engaged with our chat, but I can see her eyes every so often darting back outside to take in London’s drabness; it’s like she’d rather be sat alone with her coffee to soak it all in.

This behavior manifests itself in how she makes music, too. Rather than team with numerous songwriters and producers, Amber works in her bedroom, isolating herself. It’s partly, she admits, a defensive strategy to avoid embarrassment—it’s where she feels most comfortable. “If I'm alone, I don't care about fucking up because no one is listening. I can do a hundred takes, get it the way I want to and not feel like people don't think I'm good enough,” she says. “I get so insecure about studio sessions. I am doing more of them and the reason is because there are so many people I want to work with or that I dream of working with. I don't want to walk into sessions feeling like I'm going to throw up.”

Amber’s proclivity for self-doubt is not rare among artists; they can often drown in their own insecurities. She shares how she had to check herself when she feared that people might accuse her of using her mother’s death as a selling point. She also negates her clear talent for producing and songwriting by suggesting that she doesn’t “approach things in the normal or right way”. Her art is just her “messing around” with a computer. Talk about downplaying things”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Jack McKain

Amber Mark is an incredible producer in her own right. Bringing in this interview, I was curious to know how she reacted to a question about her being among a wave of impressive female producers. As someone who have travelled a lot and been to numerous countries, it is only natural that some of the sounds from those nations worked their way into her music:

“Amber, I’m such a fan of your music. Sade was a staple in my house growing up, and your interpretation of “Love Is Stronger Than Pride” is so beautiful. There is so much strength in your work. Knowing that female producers are such a small minority, I was really excited to learn that you are part of this new wave of female artists who not only write their tracks but also produce them – and you were nominated for a Grammy this year as an engineer! What is your process and are there other musicians or producers you would love to work with?

It starts with me normally on my keyboard, sometimes I start with a drumbeat or something like that. Then, when I have a foundation of a production down, I’ll sing into a microphone. Then I’ll figure out what I want the melody to be like, whether it sounds like a verse or a chorus and then I’ll write lyrics to that. Sometimes I have an idea of a subject I wanna talk about so I’ll try and make a song based around what I’m trying to sing about. I’ve already worked with him but I always want to work with my friend Gabriel [Garzón-Montano], he’s like a genius to me. Big artists, Q-tip would be one, producer-wise it would Timbaland, that would be amazing. On an artists side, there’s so many!

“You describe your music as having ‘worldly accents,’ and your sister calls it ‘Tribal Soul.’ Listening, there is such a sense of your inner, personal world, as if each song is an opportunity for you to metabolise your experiences. At the same time, musical influences from around the world can be heard, creating this borderless appeal. Having grown up in Europe and Asia, and now living in New York, is this worldly expression as personal as it is universal?

[In “Love Me Right”] I was dealing with an ex and he wasn’t listening to me, so I figured I’d just sing about it. It’s been a little hard recently, I don’t know why. 3:33am is a lot about my mom and dealing with stages of grief. She was German but India was her home, and she would have spent most of her life there so I really try to incorporate sounds and samples from the music there. If I’m going through something [writing is] so easy and it flows very nicely”.

I think one of the coolest things about the Conexão E.P. is that Amber Mark has a cover of Sade’s Love Is Stronger Than Pride on it. Coming back to the Pitchfork interview from earlier on, the British music legend gave her sign-off for Mark to add her stamp to a classic track:

“After being offered too-slick tracks to sing over early in her career, Mark now largely writes and produces all of her own music. Though she does manage a cover on her upcoming EP, Conexão, where she reinterprets Sade’s “Love Is Stronger Than Pride.” After Mark wrote Sade a letter seeking her approval to release the cover, the soul icon offered her blessing, apparently knowing a torchbearer when she hears one. Mark’s ability to craft powerful, gentle songs of love and mourning in the style of the mighty Sade is clear on her own songs, too. Conexão’s lead single, “Love Me Right” is a simmering anthem loosely based in R&B, but with hints of smooth jazz, soul, samba, and pop. “Why won’t you realize you’ve gotta love me right, baby?” she sings to end the chorus, her voice ducking down deep for that last word, pressing the knife in deep on her accusation, but doing it with tenderness”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Rachel Cabbit

Prior to coming to my thoughts about Softly, NME interviewed Amber Mark about a debut album that so many people are excited to hear. I am definitely among that group! Mark, among other things, talked about how the pandemic affected the album’s progress:

“A “really intense Bee Gees phase” has inspired her album

One of the songs on Mark’s new LP was inspired by her listening to disco kings the Bee Gees on repeat. “I went through a really intense Bee Gees phase last year,” Mark admits. “[On] one of the songs I wrote last year, ‘What It Is’, all of the harmonies were heavily inspired by [the Bee Gees]. I love doing harmonies, so I’ll try and put in as many as I possibly can on any song, but that song was definitely very heavily inspired by the Bee Gees.”

Other musical influences on the record include Sade, A Tribe Called Quest, Stevie Wonder and Earth, Wind & Fire, as well as German-Indian musician Prem Joshua. “I look to [Joshua] at all times, any time I’m writing. He was really popular when I was a kid living in India with my mum… and when I was starting to write I really looked to him for inspiration.”

The pandemic afforded Mark extra time to work on her LP

“I was ready to put out the album last year,” says Mark. “We were about to shoot videos throughout the summer and start doing the rollout, and then everything was put on pause because of COVID.”

As a “side project” Mark spent her time instead making beats and posting them on social media, explaining: “It really allowed me to let go of trying to have so much meaning behind everything I put out.”

But in letting go of this pressure, she conversely realised that she did, in fact, want her album to have a set meaning. Mark then honed in on making sure that her album took its listener on a journey as she herself started to ask the big questions: what is the meaning of life? Why is there so much suffering in the world? “[The album] expanded in terms of what I was thinking about, really. I started implementing [these themes] into the album,” she explains now.

Mark ended up rearranging the record “so that it’s telling a story of my life, and all these questions I’ve started asking myself”. These changes also saw four extra songs being added to the tracklist, with Mark revealing: “I don’t even know what my album would be if it wasn’t for the songs that were added.”

Creating a five-part visual anthology to accompany the album allowed Mark to live out her sci-fi dreams

Mark’s debut will be accompanied by a series of music videos, with chapter one being the lush visuals for her recent single ‘Foreign Things’ which Mark co-directed alongside her pal Satya Zoa.

“This visual side to [the album] is me pleasing my sci-fi nerdy self, and all the dreams of putting myself in those worlds. And because there is a storyline to this album… I think people will understand it more because of the visuals,” Mark says. “I always love when visuals have Easter eggs, and you get to play detective with certain things.

“It’s me being excited to direct, make visuals and make this storyline, and make me look like a Marvel character or bend water”.

I am going to move onto the song review now. Softly is one of her most gorgeous and memorable cuts. Directed by Anima Works, the video is filled with beautiful images and colours! It is a lush and stunning thing! The dreamy composition and tenderly-plucked strings put me in mind of classic R&B tracks from the 1990s (I got embers and suggestions of Brandy & Monica’s The Boy is Mine). Mark’s voice is strong and resilient as she delivers words that made me wonder. It seems like, in the first phase, she is getting attention from someone who she has affection for. That said, there is a sense of certain things needing to be sorted out and put in place. Some compromise needed: “I'm sensin' heavenly tension/You're sendin' that type of message/Oh, I want it bad/But I've got requests for you/So tell me, baby, what you're gonna do”. Amber Mark is breathy and passionate as she delivers her words. Whereas the first lines were backed with what sounded like a harp and a feeling more luscious, the beat sharpens and there is something tighter and more focused as Amber Mark seductively enquires: “Tell me, what's your plan here?/Whisper in my ear/Touch me right there/So soft like cashmere/Know you want it bad (bad)/'Cause, baby, it ain't really up to you, oh, you”. In the video, we see Mark looking dreamy and alluring as she beckons a potential lover in. I am not sure if there is someone particular in her mind. Not having a subject in the video leaves it open as to who she might be referring to.

It is hard not to be impacted and seduced listening to Amber Mark sing these words and watching her in the video! Softly is a song that mixes in R&B with something more exotic and Bossa Nova-inspired. Mark rides the beat as the song gets sexier and sweatier: “You got to love me sweetly/Ooh, boy, you've got to please me/Softly, squeeze me/You can't forget to treat me right/If you do, then maybe I just might/Let you come over and stay the night”. There is that call for respect from her. If they treat her right and there is that appreciation, then maybe they will be rewarded. I like how Mark does tease and there is this allure…yet she is not going to submit or surrender. She is a woman who wants to be given her dues; that man has to be decent and honourable. There is a contrast between Mark wanted something and someone romantic. On the other hand, she is someone who also can get rawer: “Out here like "Hey, what's up?”/'Tis the season of cuff, yeah, yeah/And I need that gushy stuff/Give me a love so soft, la-la/And I'll give it to you rough/All of your dreams in one go, la-la/But you gotta prove yourself/I'm right here, what's good? What's up?/I'm right here, what's good? What's up?”. At the heart of everything is this need for sweetness and tenderness. Riding a funky wave and beat, Amber Mark is beckoning and calling out. It makes me wonder whether this person she is talking about has been in her life a while, or if they are a new attraction. It would be hard to resist her call: “Softly speakin' (softly)/Ask me about my feelings/I'm your genie/Rub me down, oh, so sweetly (if you do now, baby)/If you do then, maybe, I just might/Make my way down to your thighs, oh yeah”. An amazing and hypotonic taste of the forthcoming Three Dimensions Deep, Softly is one of Amber Mark’s sexiest and most memorable tracks. I really love the video and the fact it is her at the centre. She holds your attention and hooks you in. In terms of the song, there is a mix of R&B, Bossa Nova and something more akin to Reggae. It is a wonderful blend that will stay in your head! Softly will definitely build anticipation and excitement for Three Dimensions Deep. This is an album that, I think, will be among…