Brooklyn -based, Massachusetts-born indie-pop artist, Nathalie Miller, has opened our eyes and hearts with her glorious new EP, “like you used to” . You can listen to “like you used to”, on Spotify Here and on Apple Music Here
“like You used to” from Nathalie Miller, is a stunningly beautiful musical journey that will leave you absolutely speechless.
The Brooklyn artist, who grew up dancing in her native Massachusetts before heading to New York City to study photography, had the lyric noted for potential use years before the song ( “like you used to “) came together. And while it first caught her attention while she was busy exploring other creative avenues, it’s easy to replace the word “dancing” with “songwriting,” as Miller has found her calling.
“With anything else I’ve pursued, I’ve lost steam and regretted trying to make it into a living, but even on a day where I’m having a hard time writing or thinking I’m really bad at this, I still want to do it,” Miller admits. “Dance was physically dangerous for me with the conditions I have, and photography was more fun for me as a hobby than as a career. But music automatically writes itself in my head even when I’m actively trying not to.”
From Miller’s head, where the seeds of songs are first planted, to coming to fruition at Rare Signals in Cambridge, where she records with collaborator, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Brian Charles, the journey a thought or a feeling has towards eventually becoming a song is not always linear for the young musician.
To say that Nathalie Miller, is talented may be the understatement of the year. Across like you used to, the dramatic and tumbling “witches don’t burn,” her take on the “manic pixie dream girl,” came to her in two fully-formed parts – the chorus and the bridge – both while she was in the shower. The lyrics in the chorus of glistening piano-led ballad “slippers” – jokingly inspired by when Miller used to tell her friends that guys in New York think being a bartender is the same thing as experiencing life as a woman – was assembled via word magnets often found on refrigerators. And she doesn’t even recall writing the towering indie anthem “sit and stew” – “which either means it was really easy,” she says, “or really difficult.”
The EP also features celestial lead single “kansas,” which dropped in September complete with a music video directed by Palmer Wells and Christopher Consoli, about the emotional labor women have to invest in their friendships with guys, dubbed a platonic friendship break-up song. And the aforementioned closing track, an ethereal lullaby daydream, pulls the listener deep into Miller’s playful world one last time, like a music box playing the comforting sounds that once helped us to sleep as a child
Each song acts as a portal into the artist’s evolving world, where a portrait of life as a 20-something in an unhinged and chaotic time comes off with a sense of understanding and reassurance. And perhaps the strongest common thread between all the songs is her perspective as a woman. For Miller, this EP is an invitation; and songwriting helps her extend it in a way that feels concise and clear.
“I tend to over-explain everything,” she says with a laugh. “When I hang up the phone with someone, I immediately wanna call back and explain what I meant when I said ‘bye, talk soon’ – and music forces you not to do that. You can only explain so much in rhymes and classic song structure. I also feel like songwriting comes sort of naturally to me, like I never get sick of it.”
The dream like artistry of Nathalie Miller, is on full display throughout “like You used to” and your music loving soul will glow because of it.
The Whole Kameese 
