The sad banger has found a new lover, even if Grace Davies hasn’t. After releasing the guitar-propelled break-up ballad “Testosterone”, her latest single “toothbrush” picks up the tempo with a constellation of thick, glittery synths, each throb and twinkle made brighter by the pang of drums underneath. It belongs on the same dancefloor as Molly Sandén’s “Nån annan nu”, using strobe lights as bandaids and smoke-machine reverb to make words linger like a silhouette in the doorframe.
The memories are all Davies’ own, though. She remembers the relics of her past relationship with a sensitivity that feels tender without becoming saccharine or melodramatic, the re-discovery of items left behind a new iteration of heartbreak again and again. In the kitchen, a picture on the microwave; under the bed, a forgotten t-shirt. “How do I get over you when you’re all over I do?” Davies asks plainly. The answer never comes; only a blur of the past going by.
Hear this song on the PM Picks Spotify playlist.