Somewhere between the backrooms and the bedroom exists a far scarier liminal space, one that smoothens great minds and unforgivingly deconstructs self-worth. Here in this house of cards, lightbulbs flicker, screens artifact, a high frequency drones and in the corner sits Operelly: humming, mulling, fiddling with the torturously purgatorial and intensely human question we have all asked at some point: does he even like me?

Drenched in limerence and punctured by heartbreak, Bay Area singer-songwriter Olivia Austin’s new EP as Operelly braids desire, delusion and nostalgia to weave a diaphanous dreamscape that doesn’t instantly demand close attention, but politely rewards those who afford it. FLUTTERS AWAY traces the contours of a relationship’s dissolution while hinting quietly that maybe there was never really anything there at all. Whether Austin is just one of us, piecing together fleeting interactions to construct a narrative so convincing it almost feels real, or is in the pits of an actual breakup becomes irrelevant. Within the confines of Austin’s mind palace, falling in love is letting someone tuck you into bed and hoping they don’t knock you out cold. It is delusion to the n-th degree and it is hypnotically cosy, marking the EP’s sweet resting spot somewhere between your favourite nursery rhyme and horror story.

Austin’s sound floats between cloud rock (very 2020s of her) and folktronica (very 2000s of her) to coalesce into what she dubs ‘tiptoe music’ (very 2010s of her). More on what-are-some-of-these-genre-names another time—the classification does well to capture just how delicate and intimate and bone-chillingly eerie Austin’s quiet delivery feels. ‘Tiptoeing’ into the first track, a mournful accordion tone whines while Austin laments, “When I tell my man I write all my songs about him / He doesn’t seem very flattered". Almost pejoratively titled, ‘Tell my man’ is a melancholic anthem for those who push past rhyme and ignore all reason long after it’s clear the object of their affection might not be the one. Under Austin’s vulnerable, diaristic reflection flickers the EP’s sole male voice, so quiet beneath the song’s bridge you might just miss it. But there he is, thrumming in all his incompatible glory, portending the doom that can almost always be sensed from the start.

When Austin croons with saccharine affection, “I like looking through your sketchbook / When you draw what I say”, on the fashionably languid and deceptively comforting ‘Everyone’s favourite’, she conjures an image so painfully serene it almost feels good to realise is pretence. Though it is me that is left staring at the mirror as she descends into a whimsical delusion, losing all bearings in the last minute before coming to an abruptly static end.

It is at this point worth noting that FLUTTERS AWAY is Austin’s first entirely self-produced record, and that it was released on the canonic experimental pop label deadAir (famous for launching Jane Remover and Ninajirachi to varying degrees of underground stardom). The label’s signature glitchy quirk inevitably punctuates Austin’s escapist hallucinations on ‘Under my bed’, robotic arpeggios and static interruptions waltzing in 3/4 around lyrics of childlike paranoia that crescendo into a moment of quiet catharsis: “You ask me if hiding will save you / Not anymore, but it’s important to me”. It is euphoric in an alcoholic-turning-to-wine kind of way, like continuing in this delirium might fix us and break us all at once. I should retrieve my things at the door she suggests, but maybe I will stay here, under the bed, with you, with him, even if it is where the monsters live….

Lyrically poignant and divinely bare, ‘Flutter away’ begs us back into the present. “I’ll grieve the year one more time / I won’t smoke it away”, Austin whistles into the dark, but the more she cajoles herself to “steady” the less it sounds like resolve and more like a hopeless Hail Mary. And so she circles back to the very limbo in which she began. On the record’s stellar closer, ‘Leaving’, Austin has finally crested her infatuation but is not yet ready to take on reality, her calm and collected voice floating above a driving drumbeat calling all aboard a train departing, well, nowhere. In sound and in subject, this is the spirit of FLUTTERS AWAY: perennial purgatory. Being as locked in as we are lost, as thoughtful as we are reckless, caught in a recursive rhythm that feels as reluctantly propulsive as it is restless. Whether love stays or love goes, whether he likes me or likes me not, Austin makes one thing clear: “I wake up in the morning, choking”. In that case, maybe I’ll go back to sleep. Preferably somewhere amongst the backrooms.

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Kavina Kalaichelvam

16 April 2026