Momoko Rose Announces New Single ‘Humans Weep’

Multidisciplinary Geelong-based folk artist Momoko Rose announces single release for introspective art piece, ‘Humans Weep’, a product of the $10,000 Emerging Artist Grant awarded to the Rose in 2019 for Queenscliff Music Festival.An artist unafraid to explore wounded subjects and raw emotions, Rose navigates current family trauma and the uneasy revelations that are uncovered from past estranged maternal circumstances. Through assessment and acceptance of her childhood and unfortunate household breakdown resulting in financial hardship, Rose birthed ‘Humans Weeps’, a web of misery built by social constructs and existential conflict.

“‘Humans Weep’ is written from the perspective of being overwhelmed with life to the point of apathy. The simple opening lyric “Duller than a bad dream, not even tragic like a movie scene” sums up how sometimes life can deal you a bad hand that you can’t even extract any drama or poetry from, it just leaves you raw,” Rose explains.

“I wrote this song in what was the aftermath of an extremely overwhelming family conflict, which caused a complete paradigm shift in my outlook on life. It was a surreal feeling because even though I had clarity and felt better than I had about myself since I was born, I also truly thought that I could not feel or lose any more than I already had at the time. It’s pretty devastating for anyone to realise that while their childhood obviously had issues (which is normal) it was still not as great as we thought or would have liked it to be. These realisations and sense of loss from everything happening left me breaking down into tears most days, then every week and then every so often until I could regain a sense of stability. If not for my partner and close friends, I don’t know if I would have made it through this trying time. Braving this has given me a newfound confidence and I now accept what has happened to me without regretting the decisions I have made along the way.  While ‘Humans Weep’ may not specifically be about these events, it was definitely birthed from them and their context which marks a pivotal point in my life.”

Written in 2018 and recorded late last year in the home studio of Isaac Barter (Didirri, BATTS) with her permanent band, Rose explores a new sonicscape, aesthetically trying to capture dawn/dusk as a landscape through sound with warm mellow guitars contrasting cold violins, still cricket sound grabs and intimate melodies.

“Sonically, this was a pretty new direction for me. From the beginning, I wanted to convey a sense of monotony in the song due to its themes of apathy towards life. I tried to do this by only moving between two (sometimes three) chords for the majority of the song through the verses and with these specific chords the only change between them is one note moving by a semitone,” Rose says.

“This was a purposeful choice which was honestly pretty restraining for me as I normally try to embellish songs with chord/key/rhythm changes, so to keep it interesting was a challenge. However, this lets the lyrics shine through which I believe are the strongest part of the song. Overall, the sonic vision for this song is an audible departure from the acoustic nature and intensity on my debut EP.”

Humans Weep will be available for streaming on all major platforms and will likely be on an upcoming EP titled “Anticlimactic Girl” set for release in 2021