India Dupriez Pray review by Vince Leigh

Gold Coast-based music artist India Dupriez has only been at it for about 18 months. During that short time, she’s gone from winning eisteddfods to collaborating with several hotshot record producers.

With several singles already to her credit, India has now released Pray. It’s an accessible contemporary pop track showcasing her more than capable vocal skills and an adroit melodic sensibility.

Merging an unyielding kick and clap groove with immediate hooks and a lyric focused on self-empowerment works well here. India’s malleable vocal tone suggests the requisite helpings of intimacy and pop buoyancy.

India Dupriez’s Pray lays bare

Co-written with Rob Amoruso (The Rubens, Baker Boy), Pray does not shy away from opening up a little:

Love my friends but they let me down
I love my dad but he ain’t around
I don’t think that it’s enough for me

It provides an effective counterweight to the simplicity essential to the chorus.

The song’s three main components flow into each other with ease, with not a bump to be heard. The verses’ ascending structure segue into a pre-chorus that one could almost mistake for a chorus. There’s gospel choir response lines floating behind India’s hushed inflections, with a general feel of resolve.

Instead, the chorus lands on an unsuspecting first position and, together with an all-too menacing 808 bass line, suggests a more restrained approach. One that soon, surprise-surprise, returns to a kinder, sweeter selection, aptly falling on the repeated line:

I know that I can count on you

This line, in fact, is the centrifugal element of the track. It’s the true resolve that connects persuasively with India’s vocal performance and the lyric. The sugar of the melody is mixed with the sugar of this line, subsequently connecting us to both the song and India’s internal exploration.

Is India talking to you? Of course, she is. Perhaps not directly, but that is the power of pop. The power of song, to be precise.