Gordi unveiled her album Inhuman last year. Her vulnerable, insightful songs grapple with casual tragedies, whether that’s fires in her home country of Australia on that album’s title track or a feeling of sinking emptiness on her new song, “Broke Scene.”
“The Lazy Susan spun around the yum cha table as I drained the last of my Tsingtao,” Gordi (real name Sophie Payten) said about the single. “I had an afternoon of writing ahead of me, which was giving me ‘the Sunday feeling.’ I was in such a post-lunch haze when I got back to the piano, that I thought I’d just lie down and close my eyes for a second. I woke up an hour later in a cold yum cha sweat. Almost robotically, I picked up a guitar and started playing this riff, as if I’d been dreaming about it. I looped a drum part over the top that my friend Chris Messina had sent me. By the time the sun set, I had written ‘Broke Scene.’”
The swirling song encapsulates the poignant energy of her music. “Why do you keep burning your house down? / Can you see you’re burning your house down?” she croons.
Listen to “Broke Scene” above.