It is like confetti in a whirlwind, Hot Mess by Ava Valianti hits your ears and crashes, is chaotic, and has a colorful aspect, and impossible to ignore. This Newbury songwriter is only sixteen, but she transforms the crude mess of teenage misfitting into the ferociously joyful, and the outcome is like a warm embrace of the person who has got it. There is a softness in her voice that is almost as gentle as the daylight and there is a muffled authority in her voice, drawing you directly into her world like an old and battered sweatshirt.
The song has a playful-pop sparkle and more inner, reflective shadows, and it immediately catches your attention, but then lets you be quiet with the thought-of-the-autumn sun peeking in the leaves on a hot and breezy afternoon. The colliding of soft textures with twisted edges in the instrumentation reflects that push-pull of desiring to conceal your flaws but at the same time needs to be visible. The production is desperate and personal simultaneously, as if it were a voice message in the late hours of the night and a friend had finally dared to laugh at her own misfortunes.
The song is self embracing with its non-apologetic use of self-acceptance, mixed with self-deprecation humor, which is medicine to any person who has ever felt too big and too little. It is a reminder that being messy is not being a failure, it is the evidence that you are alive and you are growing and blooming in your own awkward manner. The defiant pleasure of being in charge of your mess, such as spinning in the rain, because it feels good, is pulsating in "Hot Mess. She is a refreshing breeze in a world of refined faultlessness--a song that creates a punch in the chest, and Ava was smiling despite the pain, and I felt a little stronger in my own beautiful mess. This is the type of song that does not simply play but heals, sets you free and stays with you much longer than the last note does.
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