Listening to Marie Chain’s new single, “Holy Water,” is like turning a corner to find yourself in the midst of a sacred ritual already unfolding. It’s a gathering by a riverbank, but the river is made of sound—a compelling, moving current of Global Soul that tugs you in before you’ve even had a chance to decide if you want to get wet.
The beat has that hypnotic, rolling Afro-rhythm, but it’s anchored by a piano that plays with the deep, marbled melancholy of the blues. It’s an odd and brilliant pairing, like finding a perfectly preserved Art Deco lamp in the middle of a forest.
The song is a plea, an invocation for a cosmic rinse-cycle. Chain isn’t just singing about washing away her own missteps; she’s petitioning for a full-scale spiritual power-washing for everyone. Her voice doesn’t ask, it demands, with the robust, earth-shaking force of a gospel matriarch who has simply seen enough. As she sings of purging the “sins, suffering, and vanity of others,” I find myself thinking of the strange, accumulated weight of a thousand strangers’ online anxieties, a digital grime we all wear. This track aims to scrub it all off.
It’s built like a ritual, escalating from a quiet request into a full-throated, choir-backed exorcism of negativity. You can almost feel the impurities being lifted, atom by atom. The song is inspired by a mountain stream, and that clarity is there in the crisp harmonies, a coolness cutting through the music’s emotional heat. It leaves you feeling strangely light.
But once the final note fades and the cleansing is complete, you’re left standing there, spotlessly clean and a little dazed. What does one do with all this sudden, pristine emptiness?
