Olivia Booths new single MIND lands like a clenched fist on a pub table at closing time – loud, insistent, and absolutely impossible to ignore. Coming out of Manchester, there’s already a weight of expectation (we all know this city doesn’t let half-arsed bands through the door), and Booth steps up with a sound that feels both sharpened by tradition and impatient to outgrow it.
The first thing that hits you is that guitar tone – raw and slightly jagged, carrying the same urgency you’d expect from early Arctic Monkeys, but with a more desperate edge. Then the drums roll in, pounding away like someone trying to shake the cobwebs out of their own skull.
The track is built to mirror those late-night spirals of thought where you can’t switch off, and it nails that restless tension. Booth’s vocal is the hook though. There’s something in her delivery – part defiant, part pleading – that stops the track from collapsing under its own noise.
Lyrically, she’s onto something. Booth doesn’t bother dressing it up in clichés; instead, she pulls straight from that raw, jittery feeling of lying awake and letting your mind chew itself to bits. It’s relatable without trying too hard, and that honesty makes the whole thing stick.
The production, handled by Gareth Nuttall, pushes the guitars and drums right into your chest, which is great for impact, but now and again Booth’s vocal gets a little lost in the mix.
For a singer being touted as “the voice of a new generation,” you want that voice sat front and centre, not fighting its way through a wall of reverb. And while the song’s intensity is admirable, it could’ve done with just a touch more dynamic variation – a quieter, stripped-back moment might’ve made the heavy parts hit even harder.
Nitpicking aside. The important thing is that MIND sounds alive. You can tell it’s been through years of rewriting, shaping, and hammering into its final form, and the end result feels like a statement of intent. Booth wears her influences proudly – Sam Fender’s grit, Monkeys’ swagger – but she’s not a copycat.
It’s a track that will make people take notice, and in a scene overflowing with bland indie-pop, that’s half the battle won already. Manchester has a new name worth shouting about.
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