Electropop music has long learned to sing about two states. The first is destruction: everything is burning, everything is falling apart, it is impossible to breathe, and it is beautiful in its sacrifice. The second is, of course, the path of healing: the tears have dried, the sun has risen, the person is whole again. The majority work with these two states, however, today I will tell you about an artist who stepped further. Almost into a purgatory between these two states, and it seems he understood it like no one else. Meet Melissa Geurts and her new album ‘maintenance mode’, which came out today, March 27.

I am sure you are familiar with this feeling. Just imagine that the work is done, nothing is bothering you and everything has somehow become suspiciously well. However, the body remembers past traumas. And out of habit you scan the horizon waiting for the next catastrophe, because the body still only remembers this mode. The second album ‘maintenance mode’ by Melissa Geurts is about exactly that. And it is precisely this honesty with which Geurts speaks about ‘what comes after’ that turns the album ‘maintenance mode’ by the Canadian electronic singer into one of the most precise portraits of post-psychotherapy life that pop music has ever dared to draw.

The very fact of this album’s existence requires a little context. Geurts grew up in Oshawa, Ontario, an industrial city where her mother worked on a General Motors assembly line. Geurts herself spent one summer there bolting parts onto trucks while studying design. Piano from the age of two, bass clarinet throughout school, a band in Toronto in her twenties, then a divorce, a loss of creative confidence, and fifteen years of complete silence. At 38 she began writing songs again, because therapy had worked too well and too much empty space had formed. The debut album System Crash came out in 2024 and accumulated over 800,000 streams in 150 countries without a label, a manager or a PR team. English, French, Dutch. Geurts sings in three languages, and this is a working tool with an arrangement logic. Different languages give a different angle of access to the same experience, and Geurts uses this consciously. All of this matters, because ‘maintenance mode’ is an album made by a person with a specific biography, and the biography is audible here. Those very years at GM, those very fifteen years of silence, that very therapy, you know? They seeped into each of the 13 tracks and I like that Geurts has enough mastery to hold this focus throughout the entire release. I would like to highlight the most vivid songs on the album that caught my attention the most!

The opening track ‘not because it’s romantic’ sets the tone with disarming simplicity. The synthesizer bed here is soft, and the vocal with a hazy synth treatment floats through the melody. Geurts wrote it in the bath, tired to the point where she could only fantasize about a small house hidden away from the entire world. I love the main theme of the track, the exhaustion of a person who spent too many years in a state of combat readiness. I love this dance texture and the swaying rhythm, inside which something very quiet hides with an attempt to escape.

Then ‘temper temper (lumière menteuse)’ is the first moment where Geurts uses French. This is a swaying and dark synth pop with a muted gleam of cosmic infinity. This track is about what is said to a person a second before the explosion, and everyone knows what is going to happen.

I would like to highlight the track ‘rest/push/collapse’, which is perhaps the most candid track on the album. You know, such a familiar story. Melissa Geurts went to Estonia to relax, spent four days at war with her own thoughts and the impossibility of unwinding. And where did those four days go? How familiar that is. And all of this in an energetic synth house sound, with a swaying dynamic and cool energy. Incredibly eloquent.

Do not miss the title track ‘maintenance mode’, because it is the center of gravity of the album. ‘spaciousness’ versus ‘suspicious’ and this is the formula for everything that happens in the release. Geurts built an entire synth world around this conflict. Here you will hear bright electronic pads, swaying dance rhythms and the freedom and coolness of an electro pop sound. This track feels like this: you are home, everything is fine, and you still check whether the door is locked.

I suggest you stop at the track ‘great mother’ to listen to it in silence and calm. This is a track with a story that sounds between the notes, in meanings and metaphors, and about how cruel and unfair people can be. A former partner told sixteen year old Geurts that she would make a terrible mother. Since then she has been a mother to everyone around her, you know, to boyfriends, brothers and sisters, in the finest traditions of eldest daughter syndrome. The track is about this royal title accepted without a coronation. Geurts sings without the bitterness she encountered but rather with an ironic solemnity, do you feel that?

I am completely in awe of the next one ‘i think i deleted it’, with its incredibly cool rhythm, swaying pop energy and excellent production. This track will be able to charge you with energy, and you know, it has such a catchy atmosphere that will undoubtedly hook you.

The album closes with the tracks ‘borrowed confidence’ and ‘still here though’ on a very strong note. If ‘borrowed confidence’ asks the question that few dare to put into words out loud: what if self confidence always needed witnesses, and now that the hall has emptied, the question hangs in the air, are you actually good, or did you simply know how to perform well? And all of this in a hazy synth sound and an electronic vocal dissolving into echo and epic backing vocals. While the final ‘still here though’ closes the record with the image of a field after a war. Beautiful, empty, above which you keep waiting for an attack. The nervous system has memorized the threat. But somehow the mind knows that the threat has passed. The body votes for a recount. This is maintenance mode, a state of uncertainty, a trap from which there is no way to escape.

Make sure to add your favourite tracks to your playlist and follow Melissa Geurts so you do not miss even more great tracks. This was incredible, was it not?

Hey Melissa! Thank you for putting out such stunning music. You know, this is an incredible release, I am in awe of your electronics, there is a warmth and understanding in them that is often missed in your genre. And the stylish mix of styles, genres and almost entire eras of electronic music is incredibly captivating. ‘maintenance mode’ is an incredibly psychological choice, I would call it therapy as well. I will definitely show your album to absolutely everyone so they can listen to such a great sound too. I love it and I want more! Yeaaa

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