Sydney Sprague - 'Smiley Face'
Sydney Sprague is insistent and invigorating in her new single ‘smiley face’
The indie-rocker is back with a very impressive new single, which is her first since last summer’s Think Nothing which is similar in tone, but smiley face packs a bit more of a punch.
Sprague, of Phoenix, Arizona, began songwriting at an early age, encouraged by her parents. Her debut single i refuse to die was released in 2020 and was widely acclaimed. Her debut full-length record maybe i will see you at the end of the world arrived in February 2021 and was a record filled with hooky, heavy guitars, and incredibly catchy melodies; perfect indie-rock.
smiley face is certainly following in its footsteps. Opening with a crunchy guitar that chugs along confidently, Sprague’s vocals come in abruptly and almost catch the listener off guard.
The track is fast paced, laced with fears and anxieties. It seems to be a song about overthinking, dotted with witty, sardonic lines.
“I’m fine, you’re fine, it’s fine/And I waste my time thinking/Could have, should have, good, bad” she opens the track, getting straight to the point.
smiley face definitely feels like an inner monologue, and the punchy, quick pacing and layered production makes the song enormously enjoyable to listen to, despite the lyrical content not necessarily being all that jovial.
A trippy, CGI music video accompanies the single; speaking on the making of that, Sydney said: “When we first started brainstorming concepts for the video, the idea of a CGI video came up mostly as a joke. My guitar player, Sebastien is also a director, and turns out he’s really awesome at animation too. He’s based in Seattle, but he stayed with us in Phoenix the last few months to work on music videos. He hasn’t really done much animation stuff before, but he started messing around and made the first scene of the video just as an experiment. When the rest of our video team got together to talk about ideas, we showed them the clip and it made us all laugh so hard that we knew it had to be the video.”
It's a very tongue-in-cheek video, to match the song. “And I smile in my sleep/It’s the only time I get what I need/I love that for me” she delivers in the chorus, smiling wanly into a mirror.
If smiley face is a taster of what’s to come from Sprague, we should all be rather excited.
Words by Lucy Skeet
