IfOnly by innerinnerlife

On first listen, 'IfOnly', the new EP from Tomasz Szpaderski’s innerinnerlife, evokes memories of the 2000s Gothenburg indie pop scene exemplified by the record labels Service and Sincerely Yours, and Lund’s The Radio Dept. But while it may lovingly gaze north, it’s inescapably a product of Poland, conceived in the kitchen of Szpaderski’s grandparents and completed at his home studio in Gdynia. It’s an effort to return to the most basic elements of his music, freely mixing the analog and digital to capture the feeling of a band’s leisurely exploration of sound.

While those touchstone records of the early millennium juggled posthistorical hedonism and revolutionary fervor, 'IfOnly' is tuned to the times in which such passionate certainties recede – moments like our own – and concerned with the task of living through these intervals with an open heart. Amidst the narcotically-paced trip hop of 'Balmy', Stockholm-based Josephine Moriko, who recently collaborated with Szpaderski on the double-sided single 'Emociones / Prior', sings “I promise to accept defeat / it is a treat…Warmth is weakness, warmth is joy” This is not the balminess of a tropical getaway, but the glacially weighty heat of a transformed climate.

Yet this is deeply romantic music – the romance of hope, subdued but indefatigable; the preservation in memory of a lost object; a devotion, above all else, to possibility itself. “If only” may be an expression conveying regret, but like 'IfOnly', it wistfully reaffirms the promise always carried in that simple conditional ‘if’ – that we may love again, that tomorrow may dawn differently.

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