walking upstream…
Suki Waterhouse
photo: thomson200 · cc0 ↗Suki Waterhouse
sourcesWikipedia
Suki Waterhouse spent a decade as a model and actress before turning that same wide-eyed, slightly wounded persona into music, releasing her debut single 'Brutally' in 2016 and following it, after years of one-off singles, with the 2022 Sub Pop album 'I Can't Let Go' — a record of gauzy guitars and cinematic heartbreak that made her name as a songwriter in her own right. She widened the palette on 2024's 'Memoir of a Sparklemuffin,' trading some gloom for arena-ready pop hooks while keeping the same nonchalant, almost deadpan delivery. Waterhouse has cited a lineage of women who sing like they've already made peace with disaster — Marianne Faithfull and Nico in her teenage years, later Cat Power and Lana Del Rey — and her own songs read as a diary kept by someone who'd rather underplay the drama than perform it.
the sound in question
2021
Good LookingSuki Waterhouse
walk the tributaries ↓
Mazzy Star1990s · Dream pop / Neo-psychedelia / Slowcore
Asked what she chases in a song, Waterhouse has said she always wants 'to feel heartbroken for someone I've never met,' naming Mazzy Star's 'Fade Into You' as a track that gives her exactly that ache. Critics reviewing her own records have repeatedly reached for the same reference point, hearing 'the Mazzy Star jangle' in her guitar tone and comparing early singles to the band's hazy Paisley Underground sound.
listen: upstream & heresource: The Line of Best Fit ↗
1993
Fade Into YouMazzy Star
2023
To LoveSuki Waterhouse
listen forPlay 'Fade Into You' against 'To Love' — both hover at a near-motionless tempo, a chiming, slightly out-of-focus guitar figure repeating underneath a vocal that sounds like it's confessing something it already knows is hopeless.
The Velvet Underground1960s · Art rock / Proto-punk / Experimental rock
Waterhouse has said she 'started off always very into the Marianne Faithfull / Nico music, like Velvet Underground' when she was young, singling out Nico's flat, unhurried delivery on the band's 1967 debut. That early diet shows up less as noise or drone — her records are far more polished — than as a vocal habit: singing devastating lines in the same unbothered register she'd use for small talk.
listen: upstream & here
1967
Femme FataleThe Velvet Underground
2024
NonchalantSuki Waterhouse
listen forCompare Nico's deadpan on 'Femme Fatale' with Waterhouse's own 'Nonchalant' — a title that names the trick outright — both delivering pointed, faintly cruel character sketches in a voice that refuses to raise itself for the punchline.
Cat Power1990s-2000s · Indie rock / Sadcore / Folk rock
On Rick Rubin's 'Broken Record' podcast, Waterhouse said she felt inspired to make music like Cat Power, and has elsewhere cited Chan Marshall as an influence she's carried since she was a young teenager. What she takes from Marshall's catalogue is the sound of a confession thinned down to almost nothing — hushed vocal, sparse guitar or piano, no ornament standing between the listener and the lyric.
listen: upstream & heresource: Coup de Main ↗
2003
He WarCat Power
2024
My FunSuki Waterhouse
listen forSit with 'He War' next to 'My Fun' — both let a repeating, slightly ragged guitar figure carry a verse that stays conversational and unresolved rather than building to a conventional hook.