Intimacy is a grainy affair. Edinburgh’s Law pushes at the edges of comfort.
She shares a muffled, brooding production aesthetic with fellow Edinburgers Young Fathers, a band that has incidentally been getting really rather brilliant for a while now. As local tastemaker Song, By Toad points out, the two may also share a manager. That’s pretty much all we know.
With “Hustle,” Law gives us an astute manifestation of that now familiar first-song claustrophobia. The paradox of enshrining artistic potential in a deliberately limited initial “hook.” She seems at first to be the embodiment of the multiply situated, often relentlessly heavy scrutiny afforded to new female artists: all make up, wig, and perfect Instagram smile.
But the walls close in and the dark edges take precedent. A phone rings, emblazoned with the word “BITCH;” a man lies seemingly motionless, naked and hairy on the dirty bed. So much for your male gaze.
Law leaves us as the end, transformed, with nothing but the repeat button and its promise of even more disconcerting closeness.
Quite an entrance, quite an exit.
• Law: http://www.lawholt.com