SPIDER shares new EP ‘an object of desire’ + live video External Inbox

SPIDER has today dropped her brand new EP project, an object of desire. Featuring the singles ‘straight out the oven !’, ‘daisy chains’, and the title & focus track, the multi-hyphenate will play her first ever London headline show at London’s Camden Assembly on March 20th following dates with the likes of Blackpink, Lynks and Jessica Winter. In anticipation SPIDER recreates the claustrophobic Catholic living room of her origin-story in the brilliant live video accompanying ‘straight out the oven !’, heralding “the riseeee of the black Irish rock girlies.” 

Exploring the “Unholy Trinity of Young Adulthood”, an object of desire sees SPIDER pull at the tangled web of sex, objectification, and self-worth. As musically caustic as it is lyrically direct, the EP explores those questions you’re often not allowed to ask growing up – where desire gets mixed up with validation, the line between intimacy and personal space, and what happens generally when religious conditioning collides with the alleged time of your life.

From the Riot grrl meets Valley Girl cosplay of ‘straight out the oven !’ to pop-punk powerhouse ‘daisy chains’, an object of desire discusses how our experiences of intimacy are formed (and perhaps, fucked-up). Once again written and self-produced by SPIDER, the EP’s thunderous title track captures such vulnerable situations that make you think twice. “I feel like everyone has a moment in time after being intimate with someone, where they sit with themselves and go “I know I was supposed to enjoy that, and everyone speaks as if this is something I was supposed to enjoy – but I just didn’t. And I don’t know why.” It kind of leaves you feeling like you’re broken or something, but no one talks about it!!” 

Dragging such topics out into the alt-pop space, SPIDER seeks the power to heal, grow, and stand out for all that she is. Her own unorthodox musical background begins in the Dublin suburb of Tallaght, where she grew up in a strict Nigerian-Catholic household in which gig-going was banned. SPIDER instead sought community online, running pop band stan accounts and witnessing the connective  possibilities of creating work in her own voice. She took her eight-legged alias from the lessons of African spirituality and folklore – here the spider is the totemic symbol of strong feminine energy, and embodied SPIDER’s increasingly-timely belief that only you can weave your future. She moved to London aged 18, penning her COA project – which featured viral astrology banger ‘Water Sign’ – as her own coming-of-age was again suspended (this time, by the pandemic). Its visceral, DIY followup, HELL OR HIGH WATER, embraced both a heavier sound and a more unapologetic attitude. A series of unfiltered conversations with the self, the EP called for honesty over consequence in childhood, relationships or Art: a spirit vividly rendered in ‘AMERICA’s NEXT TOP MODEL’, SPIDER’s rousing call for black representation across alternative music and prominent online platforms.

With work full of wit, empathy and occasional rage, in SPIDER’s words an object of desire“was a way for me to explore the conclusions that were put there by a religious upbringing that covered this area of life in so much shame and nonsensical conditions. It also allowed me to process the anger I had towards the ways I was mistreated in the past without the pressure of maintaining “grace”. This project feels like the most personal, freeing thing I’ve made thus far!”