Tammy Day’s debut EP will pull you into the shadows.
Late last year, I played a game called Paradise Killer. You play as an investigator named Lady Loves Dies, who is called upon to solve a deeply weird murder case set on an island full of immortal beings. It’s a bonkers story that I won’t be able to do justice to in a few sentences, but one of the game’s main themes is the ever-shifting nature of truth. The game is constantly imploring you to “find your own truth” in the jumbled clues you find throughout the game.
I thought of this game while listening to Lampless Confessions for several reasons. One of them is that I am entirely unsure Tammy Day is a real person. Sure, there is a person on the cover of the EP, but the Bandcamp description of her music is full of strange tidbits and non-sequiturs, like “mysterious producer” Danny Knight discovering her via a YouTube video of her doing karaoke at a Wendy’s staff party and the EP being recorded “throughout the tornado season in her hometown.” I tried and failed to contact Day and/or Knight (see what they did there?) and am left with no other information about this EP. Still, I can’t shake off its pull.
The other reason I thought of Paradise Killer is that the first two songs of Lampless Confessions, “Light Blue” and “On the Radio,” have a powerful city pop/vaporwave vibe that is very much the vibe of the entire Paradise Killer soundtrack. There’s something disturbing about Day’s music, with her vocals almost in the background of these deeply spooky songs. Mixing in VHS-quality samples at the beginning and end of “Light Blue” only adds more mystery. Even the lyrics obscure much about Tammy Day, with references to night and shadow and a faint glow of light. In “On the Radio,” Day seems to be shut in her room, hopelessly reaching out to someone who may not be hearing her.
“Black Sky” is as eerie a song as the name suggests. The vaporwave sound is replaced by a mournful backing of strings, gradually exploding in sound as though lightning has struck. Lampless Confessions is truly a space without light: shadows and a sense of doom inhabit it. And yet! I cannot look away.
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