Feature: Telenova – Stained Glass Love
Stained Glass Love is widescreen pop music, cinematic in scope and ambitious in design. Despite the sweeping sonics and muffled club beats offering escapism of the higher order, enchanting front-woman Angeline Armstrong’s lyrics are drenched in real-world pain, private universes nestled within the sleek musical beds.
The tracks on Stained Glass Love delve into self-destruction, heartbreak, addiction, desire, anxiety, isolation, and – eventually – rebirth. There’s a coming-of-age narrative weaved through the entire tapestry, and a mature restraint to the production, deftly handled by multi-instrumentalists Edward Quinn and Joshua Moriarty.
“The writing of this EP was a pretty visceral experience,” Armstrong explains. “The majority of these songs were written in the heart of Melbourne’s long lockdowns and I think we all understand that feeling of being hyper introspective at that time.”
The EP’s title track is the emotional anchor, a tale of rebirth laid over roadtrip beats before a huge chorus bursts through the clouds, warming like sunshine and hitting like a hard-earned epiphany.
“These five songs all felt like a shedding of the skin for me, peeling it back, layer by layer,” Armstrong continues. “I can pinpoint the exact moments and experiences in my past that really marked me and grew me as a person. Those moments form the setting of each of these five songs – and there’s a strange sense of both fear and solace in being able to take you there with me.”
The self-assured first single ‘Why Do I Keep You?’ plays on ‘90s melancholic guitar pop, while follow up ‘Haunted’ tells a hypnotic tale of addiction, with echoes of Northern Soul amidst dark dub, all draped in dramatic synth strings.
Focus track ‘Scarlet’ is all raindrop pianos, and FM static; subtle runs chiming like morning bells, and ‘Silver Lining‘ elucidates the diversity of the record, marrying Armstrong’s smoky tales of anxiety and loneliness with a gauzy trip-hop track.
Telenova‘s sophomore EP Stained Glass Love is available now via Pointer Recordings / Remote Control Records
