Photo by Ella Ryan
By Clare Martin
Getting dumped undoubtedly sucks, but there’s extra salt in the wound when your partner doesn’t even bother to break up with you in a memorable way. You’re left sitting there in some banal coffee shop, wondering what you did wrong and whether you should stick around to finish your lukewarm latte.
This kind of dissatisfying break is the subject of pop duo Elkin’s latest single “Tuesday.” Over undulating synth, Ellen O’Mahony and Carla Ryan sing in autotuned voices about how “You chose the chain / a neutral space for when you made your exit.” There’s disdain dripping from every word as they retort, “Babe… it’s a fucking Tuesday.”
“Our last song was kinda deep. This song isn’t deep at all. Who breaks up with someone on a fucking Tuesday?” they explain.
“Obviously a messy break-up is emotionally draining, but the drama of it all can be gas as you retell the stories to your girlies,” the pair continue. “But when the break-up is as boring and predictable as the relationship itself, you’re left thinking – ‘I didn’t even get a good story out of that’.”
“Tuesday” is tongue-in-cheek, but also extremely groove-able thanks to vivid production by Ivor Novello-nominated electronic artist lullahush (aka Daniel McIntyre). The track is the second release from ANTHOLOGY, a series of singles Elkin are sharing from February to August this year.
“We began 2020 with a plan to release the most music we could. But when we all went into lockdown, we cancelled our plan. We started working on an EP, which slowly became a bigger project,” O’Mahony and Ryan say. “As the year went on we realised that we wouldn’t be able to release an album in the way we wanted to for a very long time. But we missed releasing tunes and we had this collection of songs that we were really excited about.”
Listen to “Tuesday” below.
Nameless Faceless 