Good singers sing. Great singers talk. Good singers can hit the right notes, great singers aren’t even thinking about notes. If a well-tuned ear can identity a c sharp or a b flat, it is not manipulative, but a part of the everyday sounds of life. That’s because the great singer has a conversation with his or her listeners. The notes arise naturally, in the process of revealing some deep emotion or personal anecdote. At least that’s what the singer wants you to believe.

Of course, there is practice involved, and structure, and even c sharps and b flats. But we don’t hear them, we are too caught up in the moment, enveloped, or entombed, in a Christina’s World of sound. 

This musical feat can be achieved in pretty much any genre. If the singer can summon the emotion, the connection is made - whether in traditional pop, rock and roll, or any other form, a singer who knows how can transcend the limits of their script and sing, as it were, from the heart. 

But some genres might be better at this than others. 

Slowcore hits the mark, made distinctive by its leisurely tempos and lack of excess. Some might think it seems boring, and the positioning of slowcore as a sub-genre of “alternative rock” pretty much extracts it from the plethora of mainstream music that gets heard on TV and in the hairdressers. But it is wrong to think of this “sub-genre” as boring, or even as “sadcore”, which might simply be a more sophisticated way of saying boring. That’s just sad! No no, try again, and you’ll find the key ingredients of a music that can felicitate that precious discussion between artist and spectator. 

I first realised this in the midst of a fast and furious bout of Instagram messaging. A friend and I were riffing about an event we had attended and why we’d even bothered. Off the cuff remarks as I attempted to make a burrito and she, according to her messages, navigated the London Underground. Under these circumstances finding the right literary expressions to describe feelings of ennui can be very difficult. That’s when she posted a link, accompanied by a single word, “This”.

I’d not heard the song before, and the style was at the time somewhat alien to me. But I got it, kind of like one gets a meme, an instant revealing of pure knowledge. The song was “Friday Night”, the artist was Michelle Gurevich. 

Capable of taking the sub-genre into its saddest recesses or stretching its parameters to embrace comparatively alert, lively works, Gurevich has cultivated a style all her own. Something of Leonard Cohen (check out “The First Six Months of Love”) meets Felliniesque spectacle (see “Woman Is Still A Woman”), her music cuts deep. Yet she is somewhat overlooked, the embodiment of niche. Perhaps her songs have a dark quality to them, with their folk-Slavic undertones (Gurevich is a Canadian of Russian descent) but who said dark can’t be fun? And, ultimately, the songs are fun because they succeed in that worthy objective of conveying honest emotion to the listener. Even in the darkness a peculiar joy is found in hearing the most delicate and shrouded feelings expressed so clearly and elegantly. “Behind closed doors, no one can know the moments known by two alone,” she sings, or rather whispers into the microphone, as if recording her voice on a tape destined not to be heard for many years. 

Interestingly, her records are all self-released. It is unclear why this is. Maybe she was initially unable to find a worthy record label and has now got into the habit of releasing her own albums, or maybe she always planned her career this way. A total outsider. The bio on her website talks of her producing music “in her bedroom”, hoping to “maintain an intimacy and singleness of expression - from her bedroom to yours”. A fitting choice of words. 

The Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno described the human desire to find truth in life and life in truth as the reason behind the “tragic sense of life”. Tragic, because it is almost impossible to satisfy this desire. Slowcore is a bit like this. It seeks to find truth in life and life in truth, but it always falls short. Inevitably. Because that’s just life. We reach out, but seldom grasp, the objects of our ultimate desires. Slowcore artists understand this, and yet they still reach out. In doing so, their music touches upon deeper, primal instincts. These instincts are worth acquainting oneself with. So find a slowcore artist, sit back, and listen to that primal reaching.

You can start with Michelle Gurevich.