Album Review: Wafia - VIII

VIII is the EP that follows - and includes - Wafia's recently released pop-infused single Bodies.

This fact is hard to escape. When Bodies came out, Wafia explained that it was about the refugee crisis. For an EP so defined by both lyrical and musical representations of distance, it is hard not to understand the entire EP as part of this project. Even its most typical declarations of pop anguish appear darker and to have dual meanings. "The ruins of the life we made" and "this ground is stained on every corner where you left your trace," she sings on 83 Days; she could be talking in metaphor, or about a war zone.