Sarah Persephona knows the struggles of being a teenager. You have more hormones than you know how to deal with, there’s nothing fun to do in your hometown, and your crush likely ignores you. But there’s the glimmering hope that there’s something better out in the world once you leave your parents’ house. After all, Sarah is only seventeen and still stuck in the thick of it. Her music, which she puts out under the moniker Angelic Milk and has been making in her St. Petersburg bedroom for the last few years, seems like a natural extension of these feelings. Her self-produced songs are an updated take on the overblown (and at times over dramatic) sentiment of sixties girl groups, full of unrequited longing and heartbreak. She wants to look like a Hollywood star and she yearns for the bad boy to finally change his ways. She portrays these emotions in such a universal way, it’s as if your high school diary somehow made it’s way to Russia and she grabbed a page out of it.
But on Sarah’s latest single, “IDK How,” she leaves some of the melancholy daydreaming behind and she gets a little more IDGAF. After two years of posting her own releases, “IDK How” is the first song by Sarah getting the proper single treatment by label PNKSLM Recordings. “IDK How” is snobby, snotty brilliance that pairs electric guitars with an unexpected dash of shimmering chimes. When Sarah defiantly drawls, “I don’t know how but if I learn how I’ll be the best,” it’s hard not to feel inspired by her carefree yet determined attitude. Sarah doesn’t know how to get what, or what exactly it is, that she wants, but damned if she doesn’t try.
