adnif is Balu Mathews; he sings, produces and plays a couple instruments too. He’s put out two singles in his career as an artist so far; this, ‘Maryanne’ is the second. It’s a lovelorn, wistful and genuinely pretty song about relationships done in the vein of late-2000s acoustic indie music. This chapter in music history did two diametrically opposite things:

1. Allow younger people to listen to music with emotional depth, resonance and feeling; these were formative moments for a generation.
2. Also give rise to the hallowed term sad boi hours, thus making this entire style of music obsolete and impossible to take seriously barely a couple years after the genre had its peak.

Either way, ‘Maryanne’ provides a snapshot of that world; possibly a tear-stained snapshot with the imprint of a Facebook status posted at 11:20pm on a Friday on the back. We've all been there.

Reflective humour aside, this really is a sincere, well written and thoughtful tune. It’s supported by the simplest of chords and vocals that shudder as Balu delivers them. It’s a song that’s obviously arranged in a skeletal way to allow you to listen to his story about a relationship between two characters and the strange, often theatrically tragic events within. There’s also some understated piano and orchestral elements that give the song something of a ‘rise’ towards its end (which takes almost five minutes, by the way), but ‘Maryanne’ never really has any shifts in energy. It’s just a sort of quiet, introspective tune made by an artist in their bedroom. Unsurprisingly, that’s exactly the kind of artist adnif is right now, and he’s making good stuff. Go ahead and have a listen.