Revealing she’d relapsed, she cancelled a US headline tour and entered rehab. The turmoil of this time and resulting newfound sobriety led to her deciding to explore heavier pastures more thoroughly than she had previously, such as on 2022’s Nocturnal. With that plus huge changes in her own personal life, she found herself gravitating towards angrier sounds, more forceful lyrics that helped spill out her tribulations onto the page and into songs.
The end result is the five-track EP Somewhere In Between, releasing on her new home of SharpTone Records, that as its title suggests, captures her in a transitional part of her life. “If I’m being honest / I know how this goes,” she drily intones on opener ‘Evergreen Misery’, as she opens up seemingly about a relationship turned sour as someone sought to keep her miserable for their own entertainment. It’s accompanied by crunchy, modern metalcore guitars that are twisted into shapes that’ll be more familiar to Mothica fans.
This rearranging of new sounds into her own shapes is central to Somewhere In Between, allowing for that bridging between old and new sonically just as much as thematically. ‘Weapon’ features stabs of choral voices, a dash of symphonic influence but still planted firmly in the world of pop-laced metalcore. ‘Save Your Roses’ flits between pulsating synth bridges and soaring choruses, Mothica questioning fame and influence on the one hand, particularly as it comes to people only given their flowers when they’ve died. “How many more times can I break? / Don’t save your roses for my grave” glides over the bouncing guitar and drum work, conjuring images of rock clubs.
‘Bullet’ is perhaps one of her most brutally honest songs – no mean feat for Mothica – as she quips about it being “better than a bullet in my head”, perhaps in reference to her previous addictions. The choice to pivot to heavier instrumentation is perhaps an obvious one – she’s working through the disappointment in relapsing and the struggles of reclaiming and rebuilding herself in the wake of this and personal turmoil. It works, though, because Mothica has never allowed her music to be one-dimensional or to wallow in itself. Resilience is key to her, as is vulnerability and being frank about what she’s been through.
This steadfast commitment to showcasing the multifaceted, real Mothica through her music pays off. While sonically indebted far more to bands like BMTH than she has been before, there’s a clear throughline from the alt-pop of Kissing Death or Nocturnal that ensures her own identity isn’t subsumed by this foray into guitar-driven songs. Somewhere In Between hints at a far more ruminatory, heavier, and overall darker and angrier tone for her in 2026 that we’re so far just seeing the first version of.