IF you heard Rachel Maria Cox's 2016 single A Phone I Can't Use back-to-back with their recent release Say You Love Me, you could be forgiven for thinking it's a different artist.
Only Cox's Australian-accented vocal provides a link.
The Newcastle artist has matured from when they arrived on the scene in 2016 as a 21-year-old with the strong debut EP I Just Have A Lot Of Feelings, that combined emotive storytelling about battles with bulimia and mental health with catchy folk-punk arrangements.
The 2019 single Prosecco started Cox's shift towards a electro-pop sound and new EP The Day You Left completes the transition. Pop artists Lady Gaga and The Veronicas were influences.
"I've always liked pop music and listened to pop music, it was just a feeling I wanted to go in a different direction, and stylistically this made sense with where I wanted to go lyrically," Cox said.
"The other thing was I wanted to do was something a little bit different and wanted to do stuff that was more in line to what I was listening to and the stuff I was enjoying at the time of writing.
"I still listen to a lot of folk-punk and indie-rock and alt-rock stuff, but especially at the time, I was rediscovering a lot of the pop stuff I enjoyed and it seemed like a natural progression."
The Day You Left was finished in late 2019, but due to the pandemic Cox decided to pause the release.
Though recorded prior to 2020, the EP was produced "pandemic style", with producers Japanese Wallpaper and Ben Field overseeing their roles remotely in Melbourne and Berlin.
Despite the electro-pop sound, lyrically the EP deals with dark undertones that Cox is renown for.
Intense hints at a mentally-damaging relationship, while latest single Boy In A Band is a blistering take down of men in the music industry who still hold misogynistic views.
"I still wanted to keep it true to who I was, and I didn't want to alienate people who liked my music before entirely," Cox said. "I didn't want to do a complete 180 where it went from emo folk-punk stuff to everything-is-happy fun and dance-pop."
Boy In A Band with its lyrics of "Too bad you're just another boy in a band/ And I know you didn't come here to make amends/ No, I know you only came here to f--k my friends," was written from a mix of personal experience and stories from the local music scene.
"I didn't want it to be too serious," Cox said. "I think a lot other people have done that really well with songs about experiences of sexism in the music industry.
"They've done it better than I could. Songs like The Opener by Camp Cope, I can't compete with that. So I wanted to do something a little bit fun, a little bit silly."
Rachel Marie Cox's The Day You Left is out on Friday.
