Chennai artist MANGAS (Aditya Rao is his name) describes his ‘oeuvre’ (that’s a very obscure reference if you can find it; your clue is ‘Fleabag’) as something that revisits the 80s. This might seem pretty accurate from the cannon-drums of his new single ‘Heartache With A Dream’, but in reality, the sound is merely an accessory to 2000s indie-pop, which is absolutely the real core of his songwriting. This is very good, because it happens to pay its tributes to an emotional songwriting style through a sound that many would consider ‘old’, so it does do two things at once. It’s fair to say that this sort of approach is exactly what brought around the 80s revival we’ve had over the last 5 years (you can blame The Weeknd for throwing it right into the mainstream), but this song proves the concept and its playability. Maybe even its replay-ability.

Yes, there’s old-school bass and synth stuff, apart from the aforementioned drums. But this is, at its heart, just an indie tune with some heart and a singalong that should be law for the genre at this point. It’s hummable, it’s got a nice chorus, and it has no barrier to entry. The upshot of any analysis one would do is that this is truly a song for everyone, which is possible what MANGAS was going for to begin with. One can enjoy the nice hi-hat patterns, the very clean guitar tones (a la current Coldplay, if that’s even relevant), but at the end of the day, you will be singing rather than looking into details. And that’s a good thing. It’s comfortable, and more importantly, it’s just nice.