LOS ANGELES, CA- I kind of wish Cherry Bomb had dropped “Myriad Reflector” in the spring or at the beginning of summer because this thing is a banger. It feels like the kind of song that should have had a few months to work its way into sweaty clubs, summer parties and late nights when nobody is particularly interested in going home.
The track opens with Mandy Lee’s voice sitting high and exposed, almost operatic in its delivery, before this pounding synth bass line comes crashing in underneath her. And I love that entrance. There’s something about the way that synth responds to Mandy’s soprano introduction that almost feels like a call and response. She gives you the call, the bass answers, and suddenly the song is moving.
That pulsating synth becomes even more effective once you get to the repeated idea of “blowing out the speakers.” The production actually feels like it wants to do exactly that. The low end pounds, the synths keep pushing forward and Mandy’s voice dances over everything rather than getting swallowed up by it.
And look, I don’t really go to clubs these days to cut a rug, but I can absolutely picture myself bouncing around with my hands in the air to this one.
What makes “Myriad Reflector” more interesting, though, is that underneath all of that club energy is a song about the weird, complicated process of realizing that you’re getting over somebody. Mandy isn’t singing from the immediate devastation of heartbreak. She’s further down the road, looking backward and discovering that the things that used to hurt don’t quite sting anymore.
That idea is embedded right into the title. A myriad reflector was an early name for the disco ball, and Mandy uses those individual mirrored fragments as a metaphor for memory and healing. She has explained that the tiny, fragmented mirrors made her think about how we need the broken pieces in order for light to find its way through, and how even the painful and jagged parts of our experiences can soften with time.
Once you understand that, there’s something kind of beautiful about making this particular song such a dance-floor anthem. She’s taking memories of a relationship that once caused pain and turning them into the very thing making people move. The broken pieces aren’t being put back together. They’re reflecting light.
There’s also a lyric about walking past Arlene’s Grocery and realizing that it doesn’t hurt anymore that really stuck with me. Healing isn’t always some enormous revelation. Sometimes it’s walking past a place loaded with memories and suddenly realizing that your body didn’t react the way it used to. The memory is still there. You’re just different now.
That idea carries into the music video, directed by Matty Vogel and filmed back in Mandy’s hometown of New York City. Mandy describes the subway as another kind of myriad reflector, a place where countless individual people and experiences temporarily come together to create one larger mosaic. She also calls the video an ode to both the city that raised her and her love of music.
I also really like how Mandy switches up her vocal approach throughout the track. There are moments where that almost operatic quality comes roaring back, but she never stays locked into one delivery. Her voice becomes another moving part of the production, sometimes soaring over the synths and sometimes locking directly into them.
Then there are those final 30 seconds.
The song starts breaking apart into this fuzzed-out, glitching release of sound, and just when it feels like you’ve completely surrendered to it, it ends. I found myself wishing that final section would keep going for another couple of minutes. There’s something wonderfully frustrating about it. The song gives you that euphoric feeling and then pulls the plug before you’re ready to come down.
Maybe that’s appropriate for a song about learning how to let something go.
“Myriad Reflector” is absolutely a club song. It pounds. It moves. It begs to be played loudly. But hidden underneath all that movement is something much more reflective: the realization that eventually you can look backward, remember everything, maybe even still feel something, and discover that it simply feels different now.
Sometimes the best indication that you’ve moved on is realizing you’re too busy dancing to hear the past anymore.
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