“Breaking Our Pattern”

When words fail, Vivek Shraya sings. On New Models, the multi-hyphenate artist lets language fall away, and feelings take the lead.

Vivek Shraya, New Models • Twin Fang, 2025

Recently, I had a chance to share some album recommendations with fellow Substacker Dan Gorman, where I got to share my love and appreciation for Vivek Shraya’s 2018 collaboration with Queer Songbook Orchestra, Part-Time Woman. It was a chance not only to acknowledge that excellent record, but to give a little pre-release shout-out to New Models, Shraya’s latest release.

Ever the consummate storyteller, Shraya has never been someone at a loss for words. She’s the epitome of a multi-hyphenate: musician, author, playwright, filmmaker, academic, and visual artist. No matter what medium she’s working in, Shraya’s strength lies in her ability to connect with an audience. But what happens when words don’t do justice to one’s feelings? Of the themes behind her eleventh studio album, Shraya says, “How do you express the horror and helplessness of witnessing progress being rapidly undone—in words—when all you want to do is scream or cry?” New Models finds her “grappling with the state of the world over the past four years and eventually realizing that language, particularly English, had become so contorted and weaponized that the only way I could grieve, rage, and find comfort was to let go of it.”

Lyrics and language are not the only things scaled back on New Models. Working once again with producer and engineer James Bunton (who started his longtime collaboration with Shraya with Part-Time Woman), Shraya strips her sound down to its barest, most evocative elements. The two have built a relationship rooted in trust and curiosity, and you can hear that in every note. Bunton encouraged Shraya to experiment on her own before they came together in the studio, a process she admits felt “difficult and lonely” at first but ultimately freed her to play and explore in a way that invigorated her creative process.

Minimalist synths bend and flicker, percussion stutters and swells, and Shraya’s voice moves between words and wordlessness, like someone searching for a connection beyond language. “When I’m overcome with feeling / I have to break free from words and just sing,” she says in the album’s opening track, “When I’m Overcome,”✦ a sentiment that captures the album’s emotional core: the realization that, regardless of what language we speak, it’s feeling that ultimately connects us. New Models finds Shraya letting go of explaining; instead, she leans into expressing and trusting that the emotion embedded in her sound can articulate what mere words can’t. The glitchy eruption of “Apathy Crisis,” the aching pulse of “We’re in Pain,” the mantra-like repetition of “Moral Panic” trace Sharaya’s creative arch, following her instinct and impulses.

I’ve long admired Shraya’s ability to move between mediums, and how—no matter the form—her work always arrives in her own unmistakable voice. It’s fitting, then, that in returning to her first medium, music, she’s once again finding a new model for making art, sparking conversation, and nurturing connection. New Models reminds me that creation doesn’t always require explanation, and that sometimes the most radical act is vulnerability: to feel deeply and invite others to feel with you.

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To read more about Vivek Shraya, check out my full review of Part-Time Woman, published in 2017, and a little something about Shraya’s 2023 single, “Good Luck (You’re Fucked).” As well, I wrote about Angry, the 2018 album Sharya released with her sibling Shamik Bilgi under the band name Too Attached.

All reviews were published originally on my former blog, DOMINIONATED, whose archives are now available on Substack.

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