Deriving their name from a line in Jules Verne’s 2000 Leagues Under The Sea — “There’s a powerful agent, obedient, rapid, easy, which conforms to every use, and reigns supreme on board my ship. Everything is done by means of it. It lights it, it warms it, and is the soul of my mechanical vessel. This agent is electricity.” — the London-based synth pop act Everything by Electricity can trace its origins to when its founding member Yulia, who grew up in post-Soviet Siberia, loving music and desperately wanting to create music; in fact, a young Yulia was essentially blacklisted for having behavioral problems amongst peers involved in crime and hard drug use — for playing an electric guitar and wearing a Kurt Cobain hoodie. Initially, the project started as a solo, bedroom recording project until she recruited Daniel (bass guitar, synthesisers) and Manoela (drums, pads) to become a fully fleshed out band.
Unsurprisingly, the British synth pop trio’s material draws from its Siberian-born founder and primary songwriter’s experiences, particularly the alienation and loneliness of being misunderstood and singled out for being different from her peers. The band’s moody and cinematic new single “Place to Call My Own” focuses on a narrator, who escapes to find solace in London, where she could freely express herself through music. Sonically, the track finds the trio pairing Yulia’s achingly lonely and wistful vocals with swirling and shimmering synths and precise, mechanical drum programming; but at its core is a bittersweet realization that while she may be able to express herself as she’s always felt fit that on a certain level, she’s still as lonely and misunderstood.
Interestingly, as the band’s frontwoman and primary songwriter says of the song, “I wrote this song a long time in Siberia, before I moved to London. Initially, I didn’t intend for it to be a track I’d record and ultimately finish – it had just been sitting incomplete in an old lyric book for years. I recently came across the same book and found this unfinished song; it haunted me for days, I couldn’t take my mind off it, so dropped what I was currently working on and brought ‘Place To Call My Own’ to life.”
