Canadian singer-songsmith Christina Martin picks up the pace with ‘Little Princess’, the third offering from upcoming eighth album Storm. Although a more rocking number than the previous two singles, ‘Little Princess’ retains their cinematic orchestral sweeps to produce an affecting and nostalgic ode to her late older brother.
Opening with guitar line that chugs along before expanding with a similarly impetus-filled bassline and thumping drums, Martin sets a determined tone full of momentum that carries throughout the track. The majesty of Martin’s voice and the soaring string orchestra contrasts this motoring along by the band delightfully, creating a sound that is simultaneously sentimental yet grooving, an emotional dance-along song.
Martin’s lyricism contains this sentimentality and nostalgia in great amounts in her dedication to her older sibling, completing this perfect pairing of sound with prose. ‘Little Princess’ is very much a song of two sections, as the restless and uneasy sound of the verses accompany Martin recalling the pair’s struggles with mental illness and the distance between them caused by this: “You shut me up, you shut me out”; “Took some wrong turns wearing heartburn / Like a shield without your mother”. Martin’s native Canadian east coast is also spot lit in these verses, as she sings of “Reflections of a simpler town” and “Shelter from Toronto’s winter” – layering yet more nostalgia through these well-crafted words.
This anxious sound gives way into the expansive and universal choruses, where Martin remembers her admiration for him as an artist and desire to impress him: “I turned to you to read my poems / I looked up to you to wave your arm / Over my head, little princess / You direct my rhyme”. It is this last line of the refrain that is sung in the only break in the song’s motoring momentum, placing emphasis on how Martin has been artistically guided by her late brother and adding a real emotional edge to this already moving track.
The accompanying music video is yet another masterstroke contained within this package. Continuing the bipartite theme of the song, the striking visuals follow the narratives of a struggling artist and the eponymous sci-fi space hero, both played by Martin. Particularly moving is the moment these narratives meet, where the artist sees the beautiful auroras manipulated by the Little Princess character, and is inspired to create ‘The Adventures Of Little Princess’ from this – a beautiful metaphor for grief informing art, and art being an outlet for grief.
All in all, the ‘Little Princess’ package is a polished yet emotionally raw one, a perfectly executed and controlled outpouring of emotion into aural and visual mediums. Exhibiting the orchestral sound set to be on full display on Storm while combining it with the Sharon Van Etten-esque Americana-rock sound of releases previous, ‘Little Princess’ is a fantastic track that shows Christina Martin coming into the peak of her creative powers.
Words by David Harrold
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