Entering In My Mind, the soft vocals of I-Shan Esther land gracefully into the first track, “Ultraviolet” channeling the floaty, sweet indie pop sound: “Thought I romanticized every bit of you / My glances were long, they concealed the truth.” If you jumped into the album without knowing anything about Faye Faire, it’s almost easy to mistake them for an early 2000s indie band, but with gentler guitars, softer drums.

The dancey, skirt-twirling mood runs down fast as the album transitions to “Siren” pushing Faye Faire into a more gloomy limelight. In the second track, Alena Nadia takes centre stage, its focal point somewhat a prediction for present-day sorrow: “I want to see her again / I want to know that she’s fine / before there’s no turning back,” with I-Shan’s vocals echoing “Please come back!” over and over again. Two tracks in, Faye Faire wastes no time letting you know that this album is made specifically as a tribute to I-Shan Esther.

Two years ago, Alena Nadia’s life changed when she first met I-Shan Esther. Their friendship bonded over their love for The Maccabees’ “Toothpaste Kisses” and their first encounter was no less than the beginning of a coming-of-age movie. Like all good friendships intertwined from and because of music, they formed a band together. Faye Faire was born, and the duo was later joined by Isra Gomez as drummer, also I-Shan’s childhood friend, and Azim Zain, bassist, known for his solo indie rock project, Azim Zain and His Lovely Bones.

Faye Faire started working on their debut album, In My Mind, and the band’s first single, “Telephone,” was released in March 2023. Rough snippets of their work-in-progress tracks were performed everywhere, from bars to dimly lit gigs.

However, in June 2023, I-Shan Esther unexpectedly passed away. She was 18 years old. 

The band fell into a grieving period, paving their way through the early stages of grief, whether together or apart. While still mourning, they found their way back to the album and finally finished it. Produced by Alena and Ashwin Gobinath, the album was also finalized with the help of several other musicians, notably the sibling duo FUAD and I-Shan’s father, Martin Vengadesan, also known for his work as a journalist and founder of the psychedelic rock band, Martin Vengadesan & The Stalemate Factor.

And by staying true to their intention, “In My Mind” was, of course, released on I-Shan’s birthday. 

Some of the album’s highlights aren’t as magnified with bold, ambitious sounds like “Siren”. The tracks that exude more fun sonically reminisce demos rather than polished results, as if they were random discoveries not intended to be shared with the public before they were perfected. Even a couple of tracks like “No Name #1” and “Wild #2” are titled, perhaps deliberately, as if they were drafts you find on your computer of an abandoned project. I-Shan’s songwriting is far from diaristic — diaries and journals usually brim with personal anecdotes, hers is polished enough to tell the audience her stories with courage, imagining a whole crowd in front of her, anticipating the first tap into the microphone. In “No Name #1” she sings as a coy but vulnerable lover; “But everything we are now is temporary / So when I’m with you, it feels pretty scary,” before the song closes with confessions — “I need you / I want it all / I said it / I mean it all.”

The album is bountiful with intimate moments between Alena and I-Shan, mostly engulfed in I-Shan’s innocence and laughter, such as her laughing mid-way through “Wild #2” as she seemingly tries to find the right chord on her ukulele or remembering the next words to sing. Even without the weight of the tragedy, these moments are infused with profound pain and longing, like watching old movies played on a film reel, with its actors no longer around. They materialize in front of your eyes; you can hear their voices, and they’ve shared these emotions with you. Now you’re just here, using your best imagination to picture that they, too, lived a whole life like you do.

That’s the imminent context you simply can’t ignore in In My Mind: the grief is pungent in the air, the melancholy is a haunting lake. There were moments I felt uncomfortable listening as if I was an intruder peeping into a grieving person’s bedroom, where they’re staying still and recalling memories of their loved ones who are no longer around. I’ve written about grief my whole life; I’m fluent in its pain but never its recovery period. So listening to music revolving around grief and its aftermath should be easy, after all this time, and yet it’s not. The band’s mourning period is intentionally packaged into a debut album, their combat against grief is bow-wrapped, and yet you’d be foolish enough not to peek inside and recognize a tumultuous battle happening in the gift box. But with all of its sorrow, the band manages to capture her lively spirit in the finished results. If this is precisely what the band intended — to highlight I-Shan’s sensitive songwriting, with a combination of her indie pop darling vocals — then the rest of Faye Faire, at their very best, has presented a gift of a friendship, to I-Shan.

In the album’s weak moments, the sound of Faye Faire is lost in the production. There are grainy attempts made to replicate their idols — crumbs of Phoebe Bridgers, folk classics scattered around but in a rushed quality. Their arrangements, at times, underdelivered, as if these finished tracks were clinically sliced and patched up into something they weren’t supposed to be. Exhibit A: “Telephone” underwent an update from the single version released in the previous year, where the band admitted to its “super humble recording,” and it was initially a demo recorded for an audition. 

But with the polished version of the album, the almost muted piano in the single version is now louder, more distinctive, and nearly overpowering I-Shan’s vocals. Yes, the single version is flawed, but the album version, the one chiselled to reach supposed perfection, has somewhat lost its identity. At this point, it’s clear that when it comes to their sound, for Faye Faire, less is always, always more.

As the album juggles so much context that carries the album, like how “A Home In The Sea”, a painfully gorgeous track supported heavily with mighty instruments by their musical guests, was written to highlight the plights of indigenous sufferings — Alena herself is a journalist whose work has covered the groundbreaking stories of indigenous people of Malaysia — it can be quite a challenge to throw the dart at the precise personality they’re going for. An example: “Our Girl (Smile Because You Love Her)” is a nearly eight-minute track written by Alena dedicated to I-Shan, seemingly the very track that loudly screams it was written during the grieving period.

The track opens immediately with a splash of promises, from a hopelessly devoted friend to another (“Since you asked / I’d commit a flame in your name / Arson, arson!”). And because of its length, it’s easy to lose your attention in Alena’s pledge. There is a rush for Alena to say everything at once, given its devastating theme, though very little will leave an impact on you. But if you stick around long enough, your patience may be rewarded. When the song reaches its five-minute mark, the mood switches and all Alena wanted was to live for I-Shan: “A grain a day won’t see you through / But the love between my mind and you / The love that will soon seep through,” she confesses, while the saxophone spirals in the background. This satisfaction doesn’t last long, however, before the track continues to drag until the end, and you realize you’d have to press play again just to fully grasp its intensity.

Alena once requested that the album should be listened to in chronological order — reminding me that such a listening method is an art that’s slowly losing its appreciation by younger generations of music fans, but that’s a story for a different time — and it wasn’t until the album’s closure that I understood why. Within the context, putting “I’m Still Alive” as the grand finale of Faye Faire’s sorrow-filled first album is no less than a subtly clever, somewhat eerie move.

The track is a heartbreaking farewell from I-Shan to the listeners, to her band, to the world, whether she intended it to be or not. It concludes the album’s main intention to pay tribute to I-Shan, puffed by the dreamy glamour of sad indie rock. The very first line is a whiplash of words written by I-Shan — “You act like you’ve lost me / Burnt completely into ashes / I’m still around, baby.” If anything, the final track is terrible at making you be at peace that this very version of Faye Faire could never be replicated in the future. Whatever we have now, in this exact album, is a capsule of what could’ve been. The supposed future of Faye Faire. The end of a new beginning. The acceptance stage of grief. The long flashback in a black and white film reel. In her swan song, I-Shan’s words are not shy of saying the quiet parts out loud; “I’m spinning out / What if by the time I get to you / You’re dead, you’re under the ground.” Every micro trace of I-Shan in this album, from the very first note to her last words that spoke eerily of the end, it asks for so little of us. Yet you’ll find yourself asking for more from I-Shan. More of her tender, honest words. More of her personality beaming through and through in her songs. More of her accidental mistakes that invite laughter in between guitar plucking. More whiplashes and quietness. Is that too much to ask for? Clearly. And what a tremendous loss it is for the rest of us to suffer from.

---

Stream Faye Faire’s In My Mind on Spotify / Apple Music or purchase its physical copies via their DM.