Jouska Everything Is Good

Oslo-based Jouska are the musical and artistic partnership of Marit Othilie Thorvik and Hans Olav Settem. Taking influence from the likes of The Internet, Grimes and contemporaries Sassy 009, their brand of bedroom RnB encourages the listener to explore the furthest reaches of the emotional spectrum. Their debut album Everything Is Good is an introvert’s playground, exploring teenage isolation and heartbreak. In places overtly on tracks like ‘Because I Really Don’t Mind’, which Marit tells us is about “feeling like an alien in a person suit. Sometimes it feels like everyone else in the world is a collective group of beings who form a community of which I’m not a part of.” With the warm crackle of a vinyl record, the album’s sound has heart while using distorted elements to tell its story. Juxtaposing sensitivity with purposefully jarring sensory overload, half-whispered vocals are paired with pounding, industrial beats and drops. As well as reaching out into the fantastical, the album also portrays the mundane reality of life with depression. Being manipulated by toxic people alongside the pitfall of falling too deep into destructive cycle of self-pity. The title track elaborates on this – it’s “a portrayal of depression. It’s about waking up with the same draining anxiety in your body, disappointed that sleep didn’t cure you this time either.”