Set against the perfectly kitschy backdrop of Coney Island, New York-based songwriter Cate Osborne, who performs under the alias Rockie Rode, transmutes her despondency into ethereal artistic expression in her newest track “I’m So Wasted.”

Blending her Americana twang with shoegaze distortions, there’s a real depth to Osborne’s mode of communicating her disillusionment. The track begins with its piercingly woeful opening lyric: “There's just no good way to ask you, I'm begging throw me a bone. Got Modelos in the kitchen just for you, babe. Please don't make me drink them all alone.” Osborne essentially submits to the malaise of romantic disillusionment, which is what makes the track so tragic. She then proverbializes her anguish, singing: “I threw up my confessions as if I was a sinner. The cross on your dashboard flew away”.

Osborne oscillates between her earnest expression and tragically futile lyricism, and that juxtaposition completely suffuses her portrayal of personal longing. Osborne finally closes out the song with a poignant devastation, singing: “I feel a deep dark howling in my veins. When you're lying here beside me, I think of all the ways that we're the same [...] But before you leave, remind me of your name.” Ultimately, the poetry of Osborne’s lyricism lies in the tragic paradox between her palpable longing and the ennui of her existential dread.

There’s something so ephemeral and pedestrian about Coney Island that makes it the perfect setting for Osborne to communicate her personal sentiments, as its banality totally amplifies her despondency. The video’s dreamy and unpolished editing also bolsters Osborne’s ethereality, as its unvarnishedness is what makes the video so hypnotic.

Forging music that is both quietly cathartic and viscerally affective, Osborne somehow seamlessly communicates her artistic ethos.