Pauline Herr can do it all. And if that hadn’t already been apparent, the multi-talented singer, songwriter, and producer is flexing her musical talents once more. She’d already begun to tease a “new era” earlier in the year, and Monarch now cements what that’d actually meant, with Herr going through the Sable Valley doors once more for her five-track EP on RL Grime‘s label.
Standing at five tracks total, Monarch sees a pair of new tracks—”Tragedy” and “Control”—join three previously released singles in “Let You Go,” “Violet,” and “JSYK” that date back to November and round out the full tracklist. It’s marks Herr’s biggest project since her three-track EP from 2022 with TWERL, Distance and serves as her fifth long-form body of work since she’d started releasing music officially in 2017. And Herr’s roots with Sable Valley turn the clock back to 2021’s Sable Valley Summer Vol. 2, the label compilation series that highlights up-and-coming artists in trap and beyond.
The EP’s first single “Let You Go“—her debut standalone release on the label—embodies the conflicting feelings of love and loss through a creative hybrid between the genres of trap and wave music. “Violet” is a smooth bass cut that holds a simultaneous sense of euphoria and calmness. And the third and final single “JSYK” sees Herr push herself beyond her comfort zone on a track that blends the worlds of wave and drum ‘n’ bass. As for the EP’s newest duo, “Tragedy” and “Control” fill out an extremely diverse tracklist that spans a multitude of genres and styles, including a surprising dose of techno on the latter of the two, coming as a sound that can only be described as uniquely Pauline Herr in the best of ways.
Herr’s status in the dance music community has only continued to bloom over the years with her triple-threat abilities as not just a producer, but also as a singer and a songwriter. And Monarch is no different, resulting in an EP that allows Herr to continue to shine with each passing release. With her new EP, Herr had mentioned that she wanted to highlight her production depth, and she accomplished just that on that across all five tracks. Listen to Pauline Herr’s Monarch EP in full below.
Featured image: Ronnie Lloyd
