Budding singer-songwriter Anoushka Maskey has another beautiful composition to present to us – ‘Eventide’, released last week. Her co-creator is producer and engineer Pranay Bakshi who goes by the moniker Cosmic Grooves. This single is the latest product of a fruitful collaboration of these two Mumbai-based musicians.
Originally from Sikkim, the 24-year-old Maskey shot to limelight with her debut EP Things I Saw in a Dream, which focused on lockdown life from an inherently personal perspective. Her bare-boned songs and simplistic music warmed her up to listeners immediately. And that is the essence that carries forward into ‘Eventide’ as well.
The only difference here is that the music here is more accessorized, with gravelly bass lines, minimal drumming and echoing electric guitar chords. But beneath all that, the originality of her ukulele-based composition shimmers through her lucid singing and perfect expression of underlying emotions.
The song’s theme draws from Maskey’s personal life, painting “a picture of a complacent person leading a mundane life, with dreams and ambitions placed on hold.” And in the midst of such stasis-inducing thoughts, lingers the hope and desire to turn things around for the better.
The song’s profundity will unravel itself completely when listeners find themselves in situations when the act of doing something seems insurmountable, and the energy required for that is absent. That’s when ‘Eventide’ will rekindle the candle in one’s gut.
Such quiet power is a characteristic of Maskey’s songs. It reveals how mature her thoughts are – at odds with her young age. Safely put, she is definitely an artist to watch out for in the next five years.
