When you expose yourself to pop music at a more mature age, it can leave an interesting effect on you. You look at it and hear it with a different set of both eyes and ears. And if you transform it into some credible interesting music, it is bound to express nuanced or more pronounced differences than what the listeners are exposed to every day.
Brooklyn artist Nisa was born Nisa Lumaj to an Albanian immigrant family. She started out as a part of a rock collective, but only got exposed to more left-field pop music while doing studies in London, England.
Exaggerate, her latest EP seems to be merging together the so-called mainstream with more left-field, particularly electronic pop. By bringing in some not-so-standard elements into her very palpable version of pop, Nisa makes the four songs here both listenable and intriguing at the same time.
“I had a bit of a personal reckoning last year that resulted in writing a lot of experimental pop music,” Lumaj explains, when asked about the experiences in her life that shaped this EP. “Some of these songs began to flourish because I was lyrically all over the place. I started sorting them all out into moments where I felt I was connecting with myself and figuring out ways to communicate. Sometimes I feel like I emotionally have trouble sitting in the present moment. This EP was about wanting to will myself into the present and, like, feel things,” she continues.
Fortunately, both for Nisa and her listeners, she manages to transform the songs here into something thoroughly enjoyable.
