Naming an EP ‘Productive Pain’ is deliciously contrary; it’s the kind of title that makes perfect sense in the middle of the night, when you’re knee-deep in ill-advised texts and picking apart the debris of your latest emotional earthquake. For Greta Isaac, that moment of clarity arrived in Middle Farm Studios, where raw nerves and real-time recording collided to create something rather special.
The Welsh artist-turned-London-dweller has crafted four tracks that demand to be consumed in one gulp, like a particularly potent truth serum. This isn’t background music for your morning commute – it’s a record that grabs you by the collar and whispers “we need to talk” with the kind of urgency usually reserved for midnight phone calls from old flames.
As one-fourth of the brilliantly bold FIZZ collective, Greta’s no stranger to pushing boundaries, but ‘Productive Pain’ ventures into territory that’s thrillingly personal. Each track excavates another layer of life’s grand complications – love, loss, identity – with a fearless curiosity that makes therapy look like small talk.
What emerges isn’t a neat collection of answers (spoiler alert: those don’t exist), but rather an invitation to wade into the beautiful mess of being alive. It’s about finding poetry in the chaos, beauty in the breakdown, and maybe – just maybe – a bit of productivity in all that pain.
In our latest Artist’s Guide, Greta pulls back the curtain on ‘Productive Pain’, inviting us into the creative whirlwind that birthed these tracks.
Image by Karina Barberis and Greta Isaac; Top: Rhi Dancey; Vest worn as skirt: Rosie Evans
Stuck On The Ceiling
‘Stuck On The Ceiling’ is the first song that I wrote and the song that really informed the tone of the rest of the project, both musically and lyrically. I was finding myself second guessing a lot of relationships and social interactions I’d had, feeling lost in the idea that so much of the gut wrenching physical feelings of pain, frustration and confusion, could be boiled down to something as simple as a lack of or ineffective communication. How my anxiety around social interactions felt like a lighthouse, and when I couldn’t place what wasn’t quite working or why, I’d usually redirect that lighthouse towards myself and illuminate blame in some way. I get stuck on ‘why’ questions a lot in my life and when I feel like I’m not quite understanding the truth of a situation, the ceiling to the ‘why’ and the ‘what if’ questions can be infinite and can keep me in a cyclical sickly loop. We recorded the song at Middle Farm Studios, as part of a workshop week that the head engineer Pete Miles organised. There were a mix of maybe 8-10 musicians, songwriters, artists – some old friends, some strangers – who all brought an idea and we’d all play on each others songs, live to tape. We only had about two hours to arrange and record and produce each of our songs but the outcome was just pure magic – I’ll remember it forever.
I’m sad and I’m angry and I’m scared that you hate me
I wrote this song when I was finding myself in a loop of trying to make sense of a reoccurring instinct I had in my dynamics in significant relationships where I felt responsible for thinking for two people – I think I often fall into a habit of intellectualising my feelings, so this song was my opportunity to really look at myself, sitting with how I was feeling and putting it as plainly as possible. There can be so many ideas and theories and explanations for when you feel impacted by a person or a situation, but this song is a reminder that more often than not, all the explanation you’re looking for lies in your emotional experience of it. I hope people listen to this and know that it’s ok to just simply feel what you’re feeling, without trying to fix or change it. We had so much fun recording this song! We threw absolutely everything at it. I think with anything I make, I want the musicality to move in complete tandem with what’s being conveyed lyrically, and this song felt like the most fun to do. In the verses I wanted it to feel like getting to work, Mat Swales on percussion and drums worked with some really interesting clunky almost metal sounding textures – it reminds me of someone getting to work or trying to fix something with some tools. And then in the choruses we wanted it to feel like a realisation, or a release. Towards the end when everything reaches it’s peak, it feels like the exhaustion of working so hard and the realisation of your truth all comes together into this big mess. I love it.
Way Too Much
‘Way Too Much’ was born out of a complex that I’d developed over the years of resenting my intensity as a person – it felt in built into my spine and no matter how much I’d try to present as the “cool, chill girl” my intensity felt like something baked into my spine that would find its way out way or another. I wrote this in a time where I was still in flux with accepting that about myself and I did resent it a lot. I wrote this song as a way of sitting in the interest of it a little bit, taking stock of unhelpful perceived truths that supported the image I had of myself. I felt like a case study and I guess this is me exploring that a bit.
What I’m realising is that characteristics about myself that I would have exclusively described as too intense, too difficult, too emotional, too much, are usually the same attributes that make anyone passionate about life, curious, playful, imaginative, empathetic. So I try and not lock that part of me away because I’d in turn lose all the things that I love about myself.
We recorded ‘Way Too Much’ at Middle Farm Studios with my best friends. Mat Swales on drums, Nathan Cox on bass, Oliver Cherrington on synth and piano, and Orla Gartland and dodie on vocals. After teaching everyone the song in the live room and spending a bit of time working on the band’s arrangement together, we played it all live to tape and I think it’s maybe the second or third take that made it onto the record. We then added layers of vocals and embellishments on top. Singing with dodie and Orla reminded me of when we recorded ‘As Good As It Gets’ – a song from our other project FIZZ with Martin Luke Brown. I felt like the three of us had all felt this way at some point, so getting to sing it with them and to continue this unspoken affinity with them made the feelings that I explored in the songwriting much less lonely.
Productive Pain
‘Productive Pain’ is ultimately a song about love, life, and loss. If the rest of the EP is a quest to try and ‘figure out’ all the things that made life so painful and confusing, ‘Productive Pain’ is sitting in the discomfort and uncertainty of it all and realising that there is no one truth, no one answer, no one conclusion, no one right way of doing anything. What I have come to understand is that externalising what I should be or how I should feel, always leaves me feeling lost, lonely and far away from my core, where all the answers already lie. This song became my anchor and I still listen to it now whenever I feel like I need a reminder to come home to myself.
Greta Isaac’s EP ‘Productive Pain’ is out now.
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