New Music: Introducing - Hydra Lerna

Here we go again. Pop stars and musicians in the bath. You know how I bang on about it quite a bit? Well, despite some earlier assurances that I’d stop, I can’t do it quite yet. Partly because nobody has really got to the bottom of the tub in terms of explaining the deep psychology of why so many musicians get in the bath to promote their music, but mainly because they just keep cropping up on line. 

Of course, simply doing a bath promo pic doesn’t mean automatic selection for inclusion on this blog – good songs come first and foremost. 

Here’s the latest one that ticks both the bath and quality tune boxes.

Hydra Lerna has appeared on Breaking More Waves before, albeit in a different guise. Since then she’s got some blue hair and recorded some brand new electronic pop music, the first example of which is the pristine yet venomous song Hydra – a song of scheming hearts and suffocation. “You’ve got power, but I’ve got poison, I can take you down,” she coos, creating an intriguing and slightly disturbing piece of pop that has a hint of the spirit of Vince Clarke pre-Erasure (The Assembly, early Depeche Mode etc) with an added touch of scientific dark minimalism. It’s certainly easy to imagine that the label Clarke produced work for (Mute) would go for this one. But then who needs labels these days? 

Pop music isn’t easy to get right, especially the sort of slightly interesting pop music for people that don’t necessarily like mainstream pop music. This one gets pretty close to doing that. As I said - a box ticker in every respect, right down to the bath. She's actually remembered to remove her clothes before having a soak, something that a certain type of musician seems to forget, suggesting they're not really taking things seriously.

Footnote: I also like the fact that Hydra’s first single is called Hydra. Popstars and musicians should do more of this. For example, The Frank & Walters (some of you may remember them – they had Radiohead as their tour support back in the day) had a song called We Are The Frank And Walters, S-Express had Theme From S-Express and The Monkees had Hey Hey We’re The Monkeys. Surely in today’s ever increasingly narcistic society every band should have a self-referencing song? At least Kanye knows where it’s at with his rap I Love Kanye. Mind you, he hasn't done the bath pic yet - so he's not fully there.

Hydra Lerna - Hydra