Living in a Washing Machine

In the video for Coin Laundry, Lisa Mitchell appears to genuinely live inside a laundromat—curled up between the machines, singing quietly about money and stories and things she keeps losing. It’s a tiny, specific idea executed with total commitment, and it makes most music videos from the same year look terminally exhausted by comparison.

The world has no shortage of pop singers who do the competent thing: hit the stage, breathe prettily into the mic, make up for whatever’s lacking with enough movement. There are also genuinely good ones—Regina Spektor, Charlotte Martin, Lady Gaga. One of those was a joke. Mitchell, born in England and raised in Australia, was nineteen when this came out, and she belongs firmly in the first category. Her voice has the quality of something that might break but never does; the tension is structural, not accidental.

Neopolitan Dreams ended up soundtracking a detergent commercial, which is either perfect or terrible depending on your tolerance for that kind of thing—but the song itself is too good to be damaged by the association. It has a melody that settles in and simply doesn’t leave. Incomplete Lullaby is darker, slower, the kind of track you put on when you’re not quite sure what you’re feeling and want the music to do the diagnostic work for you.

At this point she was only touring Australia. I kept hoping the distance would eventually close—some voices feel like they’re meant to be heard in rooms that have earned a few years of weather.