Listening to Caitty’s new single, “Ruined,” is a bit like discovering a breathtakingly beautiful, venomous flower growing in the cracks of a city pavement. There’s an immediate, polished allure to this dark-pop track, a sleekness in its production that pulls you close before you realize the thorns are digging in. It operates in that fascinating, treacherous space where affection becomes a weapon, a territory Margaret River’s Caitty navigates with the precision of a seasoned storyteller.
The song’s architecture is one of methodical dismantling. You can feel the emotional structure of the narrator being taken apart, beam by beam, by a love that was apparently designed to implode. It conjures less a simple heartbreak and more the slow-motion collapse of a grand cathedral. There’s a curious parallel here to those morally ambiguous sorcerers in fantasy novels—the ones who charm you utterly while subtly weaving a curse you won’t notice until you’re completely undone. Caitty’s lyrics capture this perfectly; the obsession isn’t just with the pain, but with the chilling artistry of the one who inflicted it.
These lingering artifacts of the relationship—a specific scent, a piece of clothing—aren’t just memories; they are presented as cursed objects, anchors holding the narrator in a state of exquisite torment. It all feels so claustrophobic, so intentionally contained. For a song born of Western Australia’s sweeping coastlines, its landscape is starkly internal, like being trapped in a music box that only plays a melody of your own destruction.
The devastation here is so absolute, it moves beyond a simple plea for sympathy. You’re left to wonder not if the narrator will ever recover, but what terribly magnificent thing might rise from such perfect wreckage.
