Back before yours truly took on the mantle of music editor, Maya Hassa did an interview called “Love & Pop” with Mind Bath, the RnB singer who has since relocated to The Six. One thing that stuck out to me in that interview was how swiftly he shot down the “tortured artist trope”, that musician’s equivalent to the Coleridgian albatross—the cursed thing weighing us down with “cyclical memories of suffering”.
But sometimes, you gotta be real and tell people, “Hey! There’s a god damn bird around my neck!” Or, if you wanna ditch the metaphor, sometimes you will lapse into a suffering that feels cyclical, as if people start turning their back on you the second you put your faith in them. As if no one’s listening when you’re on your knees with folded hands and… well, you know where this segue’s going, so here’s Mind Bath himself on his latest single, “Pray”.
“way too many of us can listen to ‘girl’ by destiny’s child and feel we’ve been on some side of that painful (or worse) conversation due to shameful men. he had me going through hell and the best thing i could do was leave him, give myself this fresh start in toronto, and pray. ppl tell you to ‘put it in the music’. fyi that doesn’t always save me, but when i’m real like that i always get the message that it’s helped a kid in their headphones. don’t you be ashamed to say he hurt you.”
And ashamed Mind Bath is not in this spacious track that doubles as a closed-door confession, with tender vocals sung over an understated vintage house drum loop and a simple synth melody. If the track’s title and a few of its lines suggest a turn to God, remember, the devil’s in the details. The swirling Rhodes piano twinkles, the vocal echoes panning left and right, trailing off, hesitant as an afterthought—these are the little tasteful moments that add up to make “Pray” a repeat listen. But don’t take it from this crackpot preacher. Listen for yourself below.
