Mia June / Brain Like Computer CD

Mia June 'Brain Like Computer CD 

Brain Like Computer, the new EP by Mia June, is an act of rebellion wrapped in tenderness. Across its four piano-driven tracks, the singer-songwriter is stretched thin by love and love’s counterpart, guilt, as well as the uncertainty of self-discovery. The songs feel intimate and unguarded, each carrying an ache—a tug-of-war between the yearning for escape and the pull of what's left behind.

Mia June hails from Perth, Western Australia, but was born in Wales. When her family relocated from Wales to Australia, June took singing lessons and picked up the guitar at age eight. Father/Daughter first learned of the young talent on her first single, “Fish In A Bowl.” At that time, June was still in high school in Perth and just beginning to try her hand at songcraft. A year later, in 2023, Father/Daughter released June’s first EP, Don’t Forget Your Bags, which told stories of growing up, finding and losing friends and love in the process, and realizing the ineffable truth of coming-of-age. Don’t Forget Your Bags opener, “Melbourne,” was about a family friend who moved cross country and now, June resides in Melbourne herself. 

On her latest EP, Brain Like Computer, we hear a more confident singer, but if so it’s because June has realized the troubles inherent in adulthood’s freedom. Title-track and opener “Brain Like Computer” is about potential: the potential of thought and action as compared to that of a computer, a device that can seemingly do anything. And the arrangement picks up on the theme, as for the first time June is surrounded by wishy-washing synth pads and her vocals become overwhelmed with vocoder effects as the chorus crescendos. Already, we see that growth is not something that is linear; it is a tree-branch, a tangle, a knot. But if June’s brain is like a computer, the rest of her is still tied to the physical: “Stomach like a wishing-well,” she sings.

“Forever” and “Rewire Me” return to June’s acoustic, organic style, wrestling with wanting to grow but wanting to stay the same and trying to find a middle ground. There's a kind of protest here, but it's soft, almost reluctant, as if June is still reconciling the choice with herself. Fluttering, nervous instrumentation mirrors uncertainty, the ache of learning to prioritize yourself without forfeiting the connections that shaped you.

Brain Like Computer closes with “Tethered,” a love song that unspools in shades of gray about the uneasiness that comes with the reality of deep relationships. It's not so much about chasing romance as it is about its boundaries—lingering in the spaces where even the deepest connections falter, where the distance between the love we dream about and the love we live feels impossibly wide. There's a quiet grace in its honesty, a recognition that some bonds aren't built to last forever, and that letting go doesn't diminish the love that once was: “We could dig our nails into our ground if you’d like to. I would hang there with you,” she says.

This EP, like the one that came before it, is like a letter one writes to a future self–a time-capsule, a scrapbook, a diary. We, the audience, are privileged to bear witness to something so raw and of the self. Mia June offers no answers here, as there are no answers. There is just the experience of being a young person, erring and bumper-carring through an unkind world, trying to find a niche to call one’s own.