Monday September 13th, 2021
Young Gold Coast-based music artist India Dupriez has just released Pray, her sixth single. India discovered music when she was twelve after getting a small cameo in a local theatre production.
As India has said, ‘I’ve fallen in love with music ever since.’ In a relatively short time, the singer-songwriter has gone from winning eisteddfods to collaborating with some big-name music producers. Merging an unyielding kick and clap groove with immediate hooks and a lyric focused on self-empowerment works well on Pray, with India’s malleable vocal tone suggesting the requisite helpings of intimacy and pop buoyancy.
The song’s three main components flow into each other with ease, with not a bump to be heard. The verses ascending structure segue into a pre-chorus that one could almost mistake for a chorus, with its gospel choir response lines floating behind India’s hushed inflections, its general feel of resolve.
However, instead, the chorus lands on an unsuspecting first position, and together with an all too menacing 808 bass line suggests a more restrained approach, one that soon, surprise, surprise, returns to a kinder, sweeter selection, aptly falling on the repeated line, ‘I know that I can count on you’. Co-written with Rob Amoruso (The Rubens, Baker Boy), Pray does not shy away from opening up a little, with lines like, ‘I love my friends but they let me down / I love my dad but he ain’t around / I don’t think that it’s enough for me’, providing an effective counterweight to the simplicity essential to the chorus.
As India has said about her latest release, ‘I wrote Pray at my piano one day and in my deepest moment wanted to share what helped me heal so I can hopefully help someone else feeling the same way. Having faith is life; whether it’s a ‘God’, a ‘universe’, or nothing at all, I want to start a conversation about it.’ Pray will undoubtedly start that conversation.
