New York-based musician Margaret Sohn – aka Miss Grit (they/she) – is a bold experimentalist and architect of sculptural texture. They’re known for deftly moving between analogue and digital, guitar and synths, and creating an immersive cosmos of sound with futuristic frameworks for their searching introspection. On their acclaimed 2023 debut, Follow The Cyborg, they built a fluid future beyond the gender and genre binaries, where a non-human machine goes in pursuit of liberation. For this year’s follow up, however, Sohn has powered down the android and turned the search inward.   Under My Umbrella lifts the lid on the Korean-American artist’s internal world, lasering in on the anxieties and heartbreak of the past two years. The title is a nod to the iconic Rihanna song and embraces Sohn “letting people in more on this record and trying not to shy away from that. The cyborg is shutting down – I’m letting it all out.”    The result is as immersive and expansive as it is intimate. Under My Umbrella channels the noirish atmosphere of classic trip-hop bands, while adding a hefty dose of maximalism and a dream-pop sensibility. Storming opener ‘Tourist Mind’ signals this stunning gear shift, a magnificent techno stomper with stirring strings, smacking drums and hazy atmosphere. On it, Sohn embraces the power and intimacy of self-reliance and solitude, singing “I’ve never wanted to be so alone”. The album pinpoints the grey area between fragility and darkness, ethereal lightness and brooding, murky undertow, while packing a hefty punch.    Under My Umbrella started to take shape when Sohn returned from an intense touring schedule, where they’d driven themself around North America totally alone. They add: “It was scary at times but very peaceful. I really value alone time so it was fun to have that experience by myself. There’s something really liberating about playing solo. When they got home, they found themselves “yearning to capture a specific energy that I can let out when I play live – less restrained.” As such, it’s a densely layered album, charged with electric crescendos that build to moments of unbridled catharsis.    Like Follow The Cyborg, its creation mostly took place in Sohn’s Queens apartment. The music came to them quickly, streams of consciousness with one new guiding principle: don’t overthink it. “I tried not to edit too much or force a moment to happen,” they explain, leaning in big choruses where it felt right. Some guitar sounds were first takes, ditto vocals, thus preserving the immediacy and authenticity of the emotion. “It feels truer to myself, and more of a representation of what is actually coming out of me.”    Follow The Cyborg had been praised by Pitchfork for its theatrical vision as Sohn used a robot cipher to recalibrate their sense of self, but for their next creative process, they were keen to flip that around. “With the last record, I wanted to make this concept album and there was a persona to help process some of my feelings and ideas,” Sohn explains. But on reflection, “it ended up shielding me from being transparent.”    Sohn has been playing guitar since they were six, while their music technology studies at New York University propelled them towards starting a solo project, determined to be more than a player in other people’s bands. But on Under My Umbrella, they welcomed more collaboration. They reached out to a number of friends from the NYC and LA underground, including electronic visionary and film scorer Sae Heum Han (mmph), bassist Margaux Bouchegnies (Margaux), singer Eva Liu (Mui Zyu), producer Luciano Rossi (Mui Zyu) and violinist Zachary Mezzo (Catcher).    Her long-time mix engineer, Aron Kobayashi Ritch of Momma, meanwhile, stepped up to co-produce the magnetic track ‘Stranger’, with its all-engulfing chorus about trying to out-run feeling betrayal. It’s Sohn’s most ambitious song yet, with its gritty breakbeat backbone and sparkly synths giving way to emphatic industrial-pop, suspended between ethereal and intense. “Usually collaboration is a little bit hard for me – there has to be a deeper connection there,” says Sohn. “But really trusting the people I was working with to put their fingerprint on the music, and them also being close friends, was liberating.”   The feeling of freedom underpins Under My Umbrella: you can hear it in the fizzing drums of warped lullaby ‘Mind Disaster’, which swells and swoops with dramatic choir pads and a heady electronic pulse, and the euphoria of the synths, evoking a rawer electronic sound. Or in the downtempo cinematic dreamworld of ‘Where Is My Head?’, where Sohn’s feather-light voice swirls like incense smoke as they sing the refrain, “you’re all so free”.    Ironically, perhaps, as they moved away from the fictional cyborg universe they’d created previously, they began experimenting vocally with more digital effects. “One thing that I did on this record was I didn’t avoid AutoTune,” they explain. Thematically, too, many of the songs speak to the idea of trying to wrestle free – of expectations, of being caught up in other people and losing yourself, and, on ‘Mind Disaster’, of the social anxiety that comes with being overwhelmed by others. “I get really intrigued by other people’s inner worlds and infatuated by people,” they add, “so I’m often swept up in their dramas or state of being. It sucks out a lot of myself.”   On the opening track ‘Tourist Mind’, Sohn meditates on this self-erasure. “It’s about how overtaking it can be to travel into the headspace of someone else or into the life of someone, and how much that can really just start to eat away at yourself,” they say. Similarly, songs explore the complexity of being engulfed by someone but also the anxiety of not being able to know every part of them. Or, on closer ‘Waste Me’, the feeling of being misunderstood but equally unable to express oneself fully (“Everyone feels wasted/And they’re longing to exist”). “Vulnerability was a big thing for me, lyrically, and trying to be a little bit more clear,” they say, as they ruminated on themes of co-dependency and deception. “I really wanted to stay true to what I was going through in that moment.”    Ultimately, Under My Umbrella is about coming to terms with yourself, your imperfections, and your complex interior world. Though it’s a Pandora’s Box of recent times, Sohn says they’re in a different but similar place now, one with a little more clarity and composure. “Having kind of a time capsule of that part of my life feels like a healing thing for me, where I’m able to be gentle with that version of myself and forgiving.”   The album evidences not just Sohn’s gift for complex production but the boldness of finding your voice. “Before, I was really timid about what I said and didn’t say,” they say, “and that all ended up being moulded into something that didn't feel as relatable to me as it once did.” It signals a brave new chapter in the Miss Grit story. “Part of it is due to honouring my feelings and trying to be more honest in my writing,” they add. “I feel a deep connection to this record that I haven’t felt about my music until now.”