FEATURE:
Spotlight
PHOTO CREDIT: Sophia Liv Maguire for NME
a review of Quiet Light’s Blue Angel Sparkling Silver 2 mixtape, that was released earlier in the year. Many people know about Quiet Light, though I am relatively fresh to her work. If you are also new to her, then I hope that this feature provides some necessary information and substance. There are some interviews that I am covering off. Let’s start off with The Line of Best Fit and their interview from July. They write how this Texas-born artist brings emotion and accessibility to Ambient music. “Riya Mahesh didn’t get into Juilliard’s vocal performance program, she thought her career in music had come to an anticlimactic end”. When The Line of Best Fit spoke with Quiet Light, she was back home after taking leave from medical school to complete her latest album:
“Her first release with True Panther Records — the label behind Oklou, Grace Ives, Model/Actriz, and Frost Children — the album has quickly become one of the year’s critical darlings and made Mahesh herself one of the buzziest indie up-and-comers.
Blue Angel Sparkling Silver 2 is one of those records that feels like a turning point — both for an artist and a scene. It positions itself in electronica, ambient, and even occasionally hyperpop-leaning production while managing to find an extremely grounding emotional core in lyrics that feel like pages from a long-lost Richard Linklater screenplay and an addictive edge the hookiness of a Swedish pop song. Along with her True Panther labelmates and others like Chanel Beads, she’s pushing forward the style of yearning, intelligent indietronica that’s slowly coalescing in the scene. It’s perhaps the modern version of the Imogen Heap sound, updated for a generation that puts glitch rappers and Elliott Smith on the same playlist.
“I wanted to make an ambient record where you could show it to your random co-worker who doesn’t know anything about ambient music and they love the songs,” Mahesh says of her sonic mission for the album. “I wanted to make something that was experimental but still traditionally pretty.”
Mahesh is no stranger to a busy schedule. While working in a hospital and studying for her medical board exams — which, mind you, she’s now completed — she also managed to release five albums — including the first Blue Angel Sparkling Silver — along with scores of other singles and EPs. “What would happen is the previous album would enter the mixing stage, and then I would start the next one,” she explains. “It was definitely, like, compulsive music making.” Sure, it was, as she describes it, a bit of a Hannah Montana double life, but she also wouldn’t trade it. In fact, she feels it made her better. What she calls the “militaristic” discipline of medical care turned into a hyper-diligent approach to perfecting her craft. “No matter what, you need to get up every day at a very early hour and go to the hospital and help people,” she says on her med school mindset. “That mentality really carried over into music, because there were periods where I was going to give up on this whole thing, like no one was listening, it’s a lot of work, I was spending a lot of money getting it mastered.
All of Blue Angel Sparkling Silver 2 was self-produced, a point she takes particular pride in. There’s a special sort of pleasure, she tells me, in correcting someone who assumes she had nothing to do with the production of her record. Women, as she rightly points out, are astoundingly underrepresented in producing circles, particularly in the ambient-electronic scene she calls home”.
It is interesting that here is an artist who is not rushing things. There is so much emphasis on content and artists putting out as much music as possible. Though Quiet Light hopes to release another record, she is going to pursue other interests. Music is very dear to her, yet she is not going to leap straight to another album. Artists can take a few years and then put out music. No real sense that Blue Angel Sparkling Silver 2 requires a quick follow-up. FADER interviewed Quiet Light in April. I am picking up various sections of the interview. It is interesting learning about her background, and especially how important the piano is to her:
“Mahesh grew up playing classical piano in Dallas and like many who learned an instrument young, she initially felt burdened by the classes her mother enrolled her in. That later changed when she realized that piano could be a “vessel” for everything she’d been feeling. As she got older, she found new meaning and connection in classical music. She found joy in developing her skills as a vocalist, training in opera for 10 years. But she still made time to listen to Disney Channel stars and country music. “Throughout my whole life, [music has] been the thing that gets me through the day,” she says.
She knew she wanted to make a sequel to 2023’s Blue Angel Sparkling Silver 1 because that record was “the truest version of myself,” she adds. “This whole concept of free-form ambient music that isn’t really ambient [but] has a lot of pop elements.”
I ask her how she feels now that her music has officially transformed from a private exploration into a wider career. “[Thinking] my music is so personal and so pure that I can’t share it with other people [is a] pessimistic take,” she says. “At the end of the day we all go through breakups, we all move, we all go through traumatic life events, [we all experience] happiness as well as love.”
She plans to release another record and then continue pursuing other interests for a period. She’ll still make music, as always, but the career machinations may pause. Music isn’t an all–or-nothing endeavor for her, but a part of life regardless of the show bookings or contracts.
“People like Lorde who are huge massive mega-stars take like four years where no one hears anything from them,” she says. “It’s important for me to be able to keep music as sacred as it possibly can be”.
The final interview I am getting to is from NME. They recently spoke to Quiet Light’s Riya Mahesh, among other things, taking part in Olivia Rodrigo's all-female festival, Daisy Chain Fields. You can read her diary here. It is incredible that we have artists like Quiet Light. Though she might not release another mixtape or album for a while, it is clear that she has already made a huge impact:
“Instead of one viral spike, Quiet Light and her fanbase have grown “organically” as more people find the music and come to shows every year. Mahesh, who will tour Europe and the UK later this year, counts herself lucky. “I’m not The Dare, which is freeing in a way,” she says. “I really didn’t think the music would mean anything to anyone except me, so it feels really special.”
“I never had that self-belief most artists have at a young age, that they’re destined for greatness,” she continues. “I’ve always been doubtful of my own musical talent. Anytime anything good happens, I’m just shocked.” When a song from her first ‘Blue Angel’ record appeared on a Spotify editorial playlist, her first reaction was pure panic: “I remember thinking, ‘What? People know about this?!’”
Signing to True Panther earlier this year took things to a new level. Six years of doing everything alone had made her a true “auteur”, taking the time to hone and execute her exact vision of Quiet Light. But self-sufficiency was reaching its natural ceiling: “I had ideas that were bigger than what I could do with my MacBook Pro.” Self-releasing music was also lonelier than she expected. “I’d put out a song, people would listen for a day or two, and everyone would forget about it.” Having a team now has been “really good for my mental health”, she shares. “It’s nice to have people with you to share in your success or failure.”
It’s partially changed how she sees the industry, too. Once a pessimist who used to resent the heavy emphasis on music marketing and pressure on artists to “really sell the product”, she now points to the likes of PinkPantheress “building a whole brand around plaid”, or Charli XCX’s immersive swerve from ‘Brat’ to ‘Music, Fashion, Film’, as proof that reinvention and creative direction can present real opportunity. “It’s actually a really amazing time to be an artist,” she says. “A couple of years ago, I would not have said that.”
Quiet Light will be the first artist in the line-up to perform at Daisy Chain Fields, which takes place in Irvine, California this Saturday (August 29). Quiet Light shows have historically been solo or minimalist affairs, but this weekend she’ll perform with a full band for the first time. “I’m all about a challenge,” she says, brightening also at the news that her Austin friends, and past NME Cover stars, Die Spitz are also on the bill. “It feels like a homecoming.”
The all-women, Lilith Fair-inspired bill – from Rodrigo, Chappell Roan and Doechii to Garbage, The Breeders and Bikini Kill – is performing for free, raising money for charities supporting women and girls, especially reproductive health. As a healthcare worker and “Texas girl at heart”, Mahesh feels the connection personally. “Things involving women’s bodies are really going to shit in Texas,” she says. “It really feels like we’re going backwards as a society. I’ve been trying to adopt a more hopeful mindset and work to make things better in my own way”.
I am going to wrap things up with a review for Blue Angel Sparkling Silver 2. The Quietus provided their assessment of a mixtape that has Pop precision running right through it. I am not sure whether she is playing dates in the U.K. in the future. I feel there are a lot of people here that would really want to come and see her play. Bringing this sensational new mixtape to the stage:
“Quiet Light’s music is best listened to during the in-between parts of life, where change is most felt. Fittingly, her mixtape Blue Angel Sparkling Silver 2 throws the listener into the middle of this moving sound, with ‘Star100’ beginning like a half-heard conversation. Layering delicate harmonies, gliding synths and soft drum patterns, the song spirals through accelerated changes in tempo and pitch until reaching a climax, after which details melt away to leave the bare essentials, concluding with a sampled conversation asking why no one’s midlife crisis ever involves Bagel Bites.
The opening track reworks 2024’s ‘Love90’, a standout from the self-produced projects of Texas-raised artist and medical student Riya Mahesh, released ahead of signing to True Panther, home to Oklou and Jawnino. Her debut with the label is a companion to 2023’s independent Blue Angel Sparkling Silver. It’s a seamless evolution rather than a hard reset, aligning with a prolific set of releases that establish a coherent voice and visual identity.
The listener is lulled into a meditative state by the sitar drones of ‘New Dream’, whilst the scattered voicenotes and warped sounds of ‘You Say I Love You’ evoke Madonna’s ‘What It Feels Like For A Girl’ and Oneohtrix Point Never’s ‘Still Life’. Quiet Light successfully toes a line many struggle with; this is music rooted in the present, echoing Addison Rae or Dean Blunt, while carrying the timelessness of artists like Mazzy Star.
While Mahesh’s previous work was at its best when constructing impressionistic vignettes, here we see her refined precision as a pop songwriter. Standouts include the pitched-up hooks in ‘Postinternetfame’, as she laments a broken relationship, “singing Jeff Buckley in the car, saying things I know you don’t mean.” On lead single ‘Berlin’, the chorus is reminiscent of Avril Lavigne’s ‘Complicated’, where a deceptively effortless melody opens into a cathartic sing-along. Her skill lies in finding depth in the everyday, shaping simple observations into heartfelt stories.
Moments of intersection are the most central element to the mixtape. A peripheral voice in ‘Self Tape’ declares it “cusp season”– a term describing transitions between zodiac signs and relationships–before abruptly cutting to ‘Postinternetfame’. This flux is underscored by the placement of ‘The Sound Of You Leaving’ as track two. Sparser by design and laced with harmonic ambiguity, it captures the hollow sense of someone walking out of your life. While its position disrupts the mixtape’s flow, its intent feels unmistakable.
There’s a striking coherence to the Quiet Light project, underpinned by a lingering sense of longing. With a discography already defined by depth and conceptual clarity, Mahesh’s latest mixtape demands recognition to match her soft ambition”.
Go and follow Quiet Light. She is an artist that I can see enduring for years. Although there is no rush and she will take time to put out more music, it is exciting to see where she heads next. Finishing medical school and looking at other projects in the meantime. I really love Quiet Light and will look out for her music. Go and follow her on social media. Blue Angel Sparkling Silver 2 is the latest release from…
AN enormous talent.
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