A person’s Notes app divulges parts of them they’ll never show anyone else. See: grocery lists, they’re uninteresting and the same as everyone else’s — worse if you can’t cook, so now they’re borderline embarrassing. Your own Death Note: names ranging from former situationships to ex-best friends (the latter, obviously, the worse breakup). If you’re an artist, it’s the one corner that witnesses your first drafts in their most embryonic form — you’d only show them to people once they’ve become something to be proud of. Though the Notes app lays bare the hidden versions of ourselves, they’re still too first-drafty to be taken too seriously. We know this.

For Andi Zephyr, the vocalist of post-hardcore band Thawr, the serious parts of her Notes app — the ones she’s willing to share — gradually evolved into recorded voice notes that feels both calculated and spontaneous, later released as an EP, her first as as a singer-songwriter. Aptly titled My guitar, the voicenotes that finally made it out of my phone and I, it’s perhaps a little too self-aware of its own flaws. In the EP’s Bandcamp description she writes that it’s a “collection of songs that had been sitting in my voicenotes that I was too scared to release before. It’s raw, simple and honest.” Thank you for the disclaimer — one that usually signals I shouldn’t be taking this seriously. Except this time, I want to.

Across five songs, Andi processes her life like a young person would — with much disdain and regret, as if given the chance to turn back time she’d do it all over again. At least three songs are about wanting to leave the earth, whether figuratively or quite literally. The latter burns most bluntly on the song plainly titled “Suicide Note” where she surfaces a simple act of writing a list of what went wrong that ended up looking like exactly that. “Write down things to remind me of / what I did wrong in this world / and half way through it seems / more like a suicide note to me.” Many of our songwriters, so adamant on spitting the catchiest hooks or conjuring the most attention-grabbing choruses, forget that the best songwriting unfolds like a short story — which is where Andi finds her footing in even its unvarnished version. 

Later in the second verse of the song, she recalls running into her mother’s car after the note was written, and still finding a way to see it as all her fault: “My mother was furious / And I was baffled by the fact that I survived / and I kept the letter close to me.” It’s the kind of memory-telling you’d do with someone you trust — choppy in execution, truthful in its feeling. When your faults are all you see, everyone else can see the memory holds none. And still you find a way to blame yourself for it.

For most of the EP, Andi resonates the charm and oddness I so love from other singer songwriters like Joanna Sternberg’s, whose work feels remote from everyone else, evoking specificities of an imagination that only she could have. In the EP opener, “Trip to the moon” Andi, again, wants to leave this earth. From her bedroom she wants to be transported outside of earth and trade places with a monkeyman. With the monkeyman, she imagines she’ll be greeted with a warm smile, later finds a “coke in the fridge” and a reminder to “feed the fish food a few times a day” — mundane tasks she’d rather do described as “you’ll have everything you needed” as opposed to living on earth. It’s true: When you’ve reached rock bottom, the mundanity of an alternative reality runs free in your head.

Despite the disclaimer on her Bandcamp, it’s easy to find yourself wanting more from her. While Andi’s imaginative storytelling and gorgeous vocals are clear strengths, the melodies grapple too much with the shadow of what they could be. “Circles” — a relentless plea for someone to treat her right — spins a compelling narrative but takes the long route when a shortcut exists. The disclaimer earns its keep here; it spares the listener from asking more of the craft, even though Andi, it turns out, could actually deliver it. The final two Malay songs are firmer in structure, with lyrics that have moved beyond diary territory and melodies built on a stronger framework, especially on the closing track, “Kembali.” Yes, the EP disclaimer exists to lessen the seriousness of it all, but doesn’t it also make us wish for more?

In spite of the habitual digging back at self-inflicted wounds, resilience is a consistent thread in Andi’s music. It reminds me of Lena Dunham’s new memoir Famesick, one that I just finished the other day. In it, the writer figure revisits her twenties spent thrown into a pit; an endless fucking up in the public eye that provoke cancellation attempts all while making one of the best shows on TV the last decade. Dunham came out of the woodwork in recent years still unapologetic in her messiness, so brutally honest in the growing pains of being an adult that never cease as the numbers in your age increase (and get scarier). “It feels as if I was born with the endless souls of generations of tipsy, provocative, women inside me,” Lena wrote.

This EP fiddles around the same level of self awareness too: “I’ve played this role one too many times before / I knew how this would play out / I knew how exactly this would go down,” Andi sings in “Circles”. Both served the same lessons lighten up as neon signs: You’re always gonna be a fuck up first before you learn something. That you’re gonna pick out your wounds till they bleed and make the same mistakes again. That being a whole person means to be fragmented into pieces and still willing to pick them up to glue them together again. The good news is you’ll grow up eventually. This EP, beneath its iPhone voice notes simplicity, is confidently grounded in that lesson.