Lonergyal delves into her latest EP Loveless, a blend of girl indie pop & haunting atmospherics
Across five tracks, she unpacks obsession, betrayal, and self-destruction, transforming raw emotion into lush, layered soundscapes.
From the fiery opener “Haunt You” to the vulnerable closer “I’ll Never Be In Love Again,” Loveless feels like a scorched diary, revealing painful truths.
With ethereal vocals and intricate production, Lonergyal charts a journey from rage to surrender, cementing her as a master of turning turmoil into art.
Haunt You
Haunt You kicks off the EP with a loud thumping bass, layered synths and vocals, and an introduction to the themes that recur throughout the album.
Loveless overall is about the betrayal, addiction, and manipulation of a toxic relationship in the place of love. Loveless’ protagonist becomes poisoned by her lover, and in her rage, ignites an internal flame, burning everything she touches.
The opening song is about occupying the mind of her lover, becoming the flame they can’t escape from even when apart.
She is “burning on the edges of the page [they] wrote,” “the heat [they] feel between [themself] and someone else,” after all, she did warn them with the line “I said I’d never leave and now you know I won’t.”
The vocals are layered by the tens, with some repetition and delay to represent the lover’s internal echo.
Addicted
The flames go dormant in Addicted and instead the song focuses on consuming the initial poison that got her here in the first place.
The protagonist is susceptible to it, willingly accepting entering an altered state of consciousness (“can’t go back to reality, I got nothing to gain”).
In turn, she becomes addicted to her past lover, wishing to “never be sober.” Later in the song, she admits to feeling both “the passion and the pain,” the lows of a “lovehangover,” and feelings that this situation might kill her.
The song has a contemporary R&B sound with a baseline and clicking hi-hat that repeat themselves throughout the song, indicative of repeatedly going back to taste more of this poison only to reach the same outcome each time.
You’re Lucky
You’re Lucky is a dark, melancholic pop song highlighting the protagonist’s feelings towards being betrayed, but ultimately succumbing to her addiction.
The sounds of haunting synths and slow drums set the tone for the discomfort she feels. At this point, she’s attempted to forget her lover’s name and face, has buried their love in “the deepest of graves,” but in doing so she feels lonely, longing for what once was.
Trying not to give that away, she makes a mockery of her lover with the line “you’re lucky I’m lonely,” as if to say “I’d never want you if I wasn’t.” Whether that’s true or not is not for the lover to know.
The One and Only
The protagonist’s intense rage manifests in the form of flames again on The One and Only. It is an anti-love song, flipping the affectionate term “you’re my one and only” to mean the one and only person she’s ever hated.
The song is a sarcastic, slightly sadistic “congratulations” to her lover on this achievement. The lyrics are as heat-infused as she is, supported by loud, hard guitar riffs.
She talks about the fire within her: “and now it fills me up til it kills me, it burns all my incoming love,” as well as the fire surrounding her lover.
He sits upon his throne “among the pyre and stolen desire” as she notes that this hell they are in is not the “warmth” that she was promised.
But he’s earned this title as The One and Only, the King of Hell, deserving of acknowledgement for that feat.
I’ll Never Be In Love Again
The final track I’ll Never Be In Love Again is the protagonist’s white flag. The poison she drank has now consumed her (“my blood ran red but it’s poison now, I’m tainted”) with the only solution being to be drained of her blood.
She pleads to be made into “someone new” as she can’t keep living this way. “Who would ever want me now?” she asks – who would ever want someone tainted, poisoned, charred from the inside out, frayed and torn, and in her mind, undeserving of love?
The song incorporates all the sonic elements of the previous songs: swelling synths, distorted guitars, layered harmonies, and melancholic melodies snowballed together.
It’s the inevitable hitting of the ground at the end of a downward spiral – the conclusion of a loveless love.