When I did a quick search to confirm we had featured Drea previously (it was in April) I was confronted by 15 choices. A couple of them were, like her, Andreas, but for the most part they were thrown up by the presence of the word dream – you’d be amazed how many song titles contain that word.
But Drea isn’t a peddler of dreams, they are more in the way of, how can I put it, passive nightmares. You know the ones I mean. Within seconds of you waking up they’re gone, you can only remember snatches of them, but you know for sure that something bad happened.
In ‘Want me dead’ she catalogueswhat frustrates and annoys her, embracing the petty and the pretty awful, from day to day unpleasantness to big deals.
Well I suppose we all have to go through this crap but in her case she gets straight to the fart of the matter if you’ll pardon the wordplay when she says it’s “a big F-you to the universe”.
Actually I wouldn’t take the universe on, Drea, it usually wins.
It’s riddled with examples of the sort of unpredictability that gets on your nerves but in her head they take on a more sinister aspect: “it” is coming from her through the door so she’ll “stay under the covers”; a “bad streak” is “Matches on kerosene”; when she’s out picking four leaf clovers (for luck) there’s a maniac out in the fields; a spark becomes a house on fire.
It’s as if Alanis Morissette wrote a sequel to ‘Ironic’ called ‘Chaotic’. (Substitute ‘Psychotic’ or ‘Demonic’ as you will.
And there’s no respite. Even when she’s “alright” her tormentor comes to get her, driving her insane with love but leaving her bleeding on the concrete floor.
And yet for all that the underlying message is one of defiance in the face of adversity.
Speaking of Ms Morissette, ‘Want me dead’ is presented in a similar downbeat style in the verse and explosive chorus that features in many of her songs while the musical outro is a maelstrom of sounds which, I guess, is supposed to represent the confusion swirling around in her head.
It is very 1990s, a darker era than the vibrant 80s and which offered aphotic songs from the likes of Nirvana, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Smashing Pumpkins and even Hanson’s ‘MMMBop’.
‘Want me dead’ would have sat well with all of them.
It was created in collaboration with the “Norwegian indie legend” Mikhael Paskalev.
Find her on:
Website (label): https://www.viftrecords.com/drea/ep
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/andrea.aadland
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dreadreamusic
