Some songs announce themselves like they’re running for office. Big choruses, flashy riffs, a handshake for every voter. Fiona Amaka’s Cowards and Shadows is… not that. This is the musical equivalent of someone slipping you a note in a crowded room and walking away before you can read it. It doesn’t beg for your attention; it just sort of exists, knowing full well that if you’re the right kind of person, you’ll lean in.
First thing you notice? Warmth. But not “sunny beach holiday” warmth; more like the slow, creeping kind you get standing too close to a radiator in a small venue, the amps humming like they’ve been awake longer than you have. The mix feels physical. The bass doesn’t sit politely in the background. Rather, it wraps around the track like a heavy coat you didn’t know you needed. The guitars shimmer without ever tipping into “jangly optimism,” and the drums keep everything moving with the kind of patience usually reserved for good therapists and cats deciding whether to sit on you.
Vocals? Imagine early Alanis Morissette fronting The Cranberries, except she’s just come from a long, slightly mysterious night out and she’s decided she’s going to tell you some of what happened, but not all of it. There’s vulnerability, sure, but also bite. The kind of delivery that lets a note hang in the air just long enough to make you wonder if it’s deliberate.
Cowards and Shadows isn’t sneaking out in platform boots and face paint, waving a copy of Bowie’s Hunky Dory in your face. The Bowie link is subtler; more a shared instinct than a shared style. It’s in how the song holds two truths at once: sincerity and performance, confession and construction. Fiona Amaka delivers every line in that strange space where you can’t tell if she’s revealing something personal or just masterfully embodying a character who would. You lean in, not waiting for the mask to drop, but wondering if there ever was a mask or if the mask is the face.
By the time Cowards and Shadows ends, it feels less like a conclusion and more like a pause. For those who like their indie rock cinematic, ambiguous, and driven more by mood than fireworks, Fiona Amaka has just built you your new favourite corner to stand in.
Cowards and Shadows by Fiona Amaka works because it’s not forcing you to feel anything specific. It’s confident enough to just be, trusting you’ll meet it halfway. By the time it fades out, it doesn’t feel like an ending so much as a pause; the kind that makes you think, “Yeah, I’ll probably go back and live there again for a bit.” Basically, if you like your indie rock cinematic, slightly ambiguous, and more interested in mood than fireworks, congratulations: Fiona Amaka just gave you your new favourite corner to stand in.
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About the Author
A tenured media critic known working as a ghost writer, freelance critic for various publications around the world, the former lead writer of review blogspace Atop The Treehouse and content creator for Manila Bulletin.
