‘In My Garden’ is the latest single from the London-based dream-pop artist, Brioni. The track is rich with vivid natural imagery, depicting her life as a garden and her feelings as flowers. The reason for this changes over the course of the track. At the start, nature is suffocating her. Lines such as “I’m drowning under a flower’s rain” show how wrong it is to defy what is natural. This auto-biographical track was penned about an extremely honest and personal revelation. Brioni writes about her insecurities, revealing how, in the past, she felt she could never say, do or even feel the right things. She describes how this led every relationship to end with “broken promises” and “breached trust”.
Nature is also used to imply new beginnings and rebirth. Whilst reading books on the traditional meanings of different plants, she discovered that foxgloves symbolise lies whilst honesty, unsurprisingly, is associated with sincerity. At first, she pictures herself as “smelling like foxgloves”. She is alluding to how she felt she was trying to please everyone with fake versions of who she was. She wishes for “honesty” to “blossom”, so that she can be herself.
Finally, she urges her fans to find beauty in themselves like she does in nature. Essentially, ‘In My Garden’ is about self-appreciation. It weaves together, in the most beautiful way, a song that everyone needs to hear.
However, like many talented musicians, Brioni’s creativity extends well beyond the borders of music. In fact, she first dived into the arts as an abstract painter, for which she has been commissioned to create several art projects all across the capital city. Yet, she is not one to separate the art forms. The clear images which she can conjure with her music derive from the vibrant splashes of paint which she spreads onto her canvas. This is made easier by her chromesthesia – a type of synaesthesia which causes sound, and therefore music to evoke colours and shapes in the mind. Brioni performs alone on stage with only a keyboard, a controller and a laptop. What she is doing during her performances is channelling her instinctive artistic ability and reproducing it in musical form. The artist embraces her unique sensory capability in the best way possible – by combining all her talents. One of these “talents” is dreaming. So, she chose the best possible music genre to showcase her wistful feelings. The garden in Brioni’s mind is brought to life through a soothing and pensive synth-led pop.
The droning synthesisers that introduce the track are almost disorientating. This signals the start of Brioni’s musical journey. The verse’s steady beat comes in a second before Brioni’s breathy and emotive voice, which is reminiscent of artists such as FKA Twigs. As you become adrift on this musician’s unique sound, you begin to understand how trapped Brioni felt underneath her fake personas.
However, for a song so sincere and sentimental, the chorus is unbelievably catchy. The beat quickens and the energy heightens leading up to Brioni’s ultimate catharsis of emotion. “Broken promises. Bonds of Trust are breached,” she cries over the sound of wailing synthesisers. Everything in this glorious outburst of feeling carries an underlying sentiment: “I am going to be better”.
Although, the bridge section is when the song really reaches the peak of its drama. At this point, Brioni appears to be pleading to her loved ones to forgive her. She commits to never returning to who she once was, singing, “foxgloves in the past”. A dark and industrial bassline kicks in, giving the track a menacing air, whilst strange buzzing and ringing sounds echo in the background. The tension is released by the epic build up to another huge chorus. From there, the track shifts between the chorus and the bridge, giving the effect of a bombardment of thoughts from all angles.
A brilliant producer and picture painter, Brioni is certainly one to look out for in the future of dream-pop.
‘In My Garden’ is available on all streaming services
50% of Brioni’s profits from streaming will be going towards planting trees. This is through the organisation “Treedom Trees”