“Separate Rooms” is the fifth and final single taken from the Brooklynite’s upcoming sophomore LP
Author: Willa Rudolph
Praised as “a bridge to pop music’s future,” today B.Miles releases the single “Separate Rooms” from her upcoming sophomore album Different Pages (available 9/29/23 on Moon Crawl Records). In the time since the drop of her debut album In Order Of Appearance in 2020 and its deluxe, expanded edition in 2021, B.Miles has spent the better part of the past year putting out one dreamy, sonically adventurous single after another: “One Trick Pony,” “The Year I Felt Cool,” “Wide Eyed,” and the title track of Different Pages.
“Different Pages” and “Separate Rooms” both deal with the main theme of the indie artist’s upcoming album: B. Miles suspects that she may be on a different page than other people her age.
In her latest addition to this collection, “Separate Rooms,” a dreamy and slidey guitar draws you into a mysterious Sixties vibe, weaving between B.Miles’ clean pop vocals. “Separate Rooms” is like a sheer curtain floating into your room on a soft breeze on a warm night, illuminated by moonlight. This coming-of-age song has a nostalgic mood, with airy and whispering harmonies twinkling about like dappled sunlight on the track. The introspective artist looks back on a love that has ended, as she grapples with the fact that they’re better off sleeping in “separate rooms.” In the chorus, she sings:
“I’ve been thinking ‘bout your Yankees t-shirt lately
Torn and hung over your broken desk seat
I’d wear it when we would sleep
Always wanted more of you”
On “Different Pages,” B.Miles draws us a picture in which she is “unchecking” the boxes she once felt pressured to check, unlearning the expectations she may have inherited from society. Shorefire Media specifies in the press release that these boxes include: finding a long-term relationship, a stable job, a house with a white picket fence type-of-thing…but now, B. is confronting these outdated and oppressive societal guidelines women are expected to meet, wrestling with them and trying to figure out where she fits in all of this.
Throughout the making of this record, B.Miles found herself at the end of a relationship she’d been in throughout her entire 20s, but while she looks back, it’s not as if she is wishing to go back. Different Pages is inspired by her favorite playlist on her first iPod, influenced by artists like Natalie Imbruglia, Dolores O’Riordan, and Kylie Minogue, and was recorded in a friend’s “small-town cabin.” B.’s exploration of this new phase in her life involves both drawing from her past and finding a new voice with which to express herself, a new well from which to create.
Check out “Separate Rooms” and stay tuned for Different Pages, out September 29th.
All photos by: Cobey Arner