Best-Ex – Good At Feeling Bad

Candy Hearts and Best-Ex front woman Mariel Loveland has always been a charming songsmith, existing cautiously at the precarious intersection of optimism and disappointment.  Even her happiest songs have always seemed rooted in an overarching backdrop of sadness and heartbreak.  This is likely due in part, as she’s explained in a roundabout way, to her use of music as a therapeutic tool.  

Since changing her band name to Best-Ex, Loveland has spoken up about her experience with verbally abusive tour managers, toxic boyfriends, and with the release of her new EP, Good At Feeling Bad, a damaging long term relationship.  In various press releases she describes the psychological toll of investing everything in her partner, including moving to England, until as she describes, “I had become so obsessed with caring for him and making him happy that one day, I woke up with an entirely different life in a foreign country.”  Such an abrupt end to a relationship and the resulting void creates a search for meaning that becomes Loveland’s fuel for songwriting.

While Loveland started Candy Hearts as a predominantly pop-punk project, Best-Ex has evolved into more of an indie-pop affair.  Loveland’s sugary sweet vocals maintain continuity across both iterations, but long time fans will undeniably notice that the pop-inspired choruses that feel more akin to Alison Weiss and Carly Rae Jepson than their original pop-punk origin.  Opener “Gap Tooth (On My Mind)” eases into one of the album’s most infectious and minimalist electro-pop choruses, serving as a statement of liberation from past heartbreak and regrets.  Amidst a combination of finger snaps, a chorus of female led gang vocals, and moments of instrumental minimalism, she even makes room for a loose likeness to Billie Eilish.  

This combination of minimalism meets infectious choruses resurfaces during songs like “Gonna Feed the Sharks,” in which she draws upon her experience of media backlash after describing her claims of ongoing verbal abuse by a former tour manager.  “Gonna feed the sharks, gonna feed the sharks until they feel sick,” she sings of media spin, following with the line, “gonna let ‘em talk, gonna let ‘em talk,” in a moment of personal release that acknowledges the limited control we have over the spread of misinformation.

Best-Ex is fairly adept at putting on a strong face and just showing up.  It can take a lot to just get out of bed when you feel like you have the weight of the world on your shoulders, but Loveland always makes it to the party – even if it’s just a party of one.  “I could be my own best friend,” she repeats with a sense of jubilation during the chorus of “Lemons.”  Good At Feeling Bad recognizes that we all make mistakes and find ourselves in tricky situations – and in some cases more than our fair share – but we shouldn’t let them define us.  The title track serves as an uplifting reminder that sometimes all it takes is a change in perspective to find a smile.  Only “Two Of Us,” which treds slowly into soft ballad territory, dampens the album’s trajectory in feeling a little too glum.  

Between Candy Hearts and Best-Ex, Mariel Loveland has been making a go at this for over a decade now, and she keeps finding herself right on the cusp of breaking out.  Good At Feeling Bad is a musical side of Loveland that we’ve never seen before, and one that stands to get noticed both by long time fans and newcomers alike.  Candy Hearts and Best-Ex have always deserved more recognition than they’ve garnered, and as Good At Feeling Bad shows, this is Mariel Loveland’s time to shine.