Photo by Bobbie Knopp
Aymen Saleh turns addiction, repetition and emotional exhaustion into theatrical indie-pop on the latest preview of Wedding Season
There is something unsettling about realizing that what once felt intoxicating has become routine.
On “Us, Forever,” the latest single from Holy Pinto, British songwriter Aymen Saleh examines precisely that moment: when excitement becomes repetition, pleasure becomes dependency, and the fireworks that once illuminated something begin to feel destructive—or worse, ordinary.
“‘Us, Forever’ is a song about the intoxicating cycle of addiction and the ways we get stuck within it,” Saleh explains. “The familiar fireworks, once alluring and exciting, now simply explosive, or even dull.”
That tension is embedded directly into the track’s construction. Piano and horns collide with a pulsing beat and a cyclical guitar figure, creating something theatrical without sacrificing the intimacy that has long defined Saleh’s songwriting. The guitar riff itself began over a hip-hop sample before evolving into the brooding arrangement heard on the finished recording.
“The song leans fully into that broody emotion,” Saleh says. “It took a while to sharpen the edges, with the offbeat accents creating a sense of urgency despite its contained nature.”
The result feels appropriately trapped between movement and stasis. “Us, Forever” keeps pushing forward while emotionally circling the same place—a musical reflection of the addictive patterns at the center of the song.
It is also another glimpse into the unusually detailed world of Holy Pinto’s forthcoming album, Wedding Season, arriving September 14.
Rather than approaching the record as a straightforward collection of songs, Saleh spent years pulling it apart and rebuilding it. Arrangements were reconsidered, sounds chased across unconventional spaces, and seemingly incidental details were allowed to become part of the album’s identity.
Wedding Season LP Out September 14th
Parts of Wedding Season began in Washington, D.C., in the basement of Bartees Strange, while much of the writing and recording happened in Saleh’s Milwaukee apartment above a Brady Street bar. Other sessions unfolded in places ranging from a rural Wisconsin boat warehouse to a southern Illinois cathedral and an industrial piano repair shop.
That unconventional geography matters because Wedding Season increasingly feels less like a pristine studio document than a record designed to retain evidence of the life happening around it.
Room tone, overheard stories, atmosphere, humor, anxiety and ornamental flourishes all find their way into Saleh’s songwriting world. The objective isn’t necessarily efficiency. It’s texture.
That approach makes sense for a writer whose strength often lies in specificity. There are traces of the emotional directness associated with Death Cab for Cutie, the piano-driven melodic instincts of Ben Folds, and the ability of Jens Lekman to transform awkward or seemingly mundane observations into something unexpectedly affecting. But Saleh’s songs increasingly feel less interested in displaying those influences than in following their own peculiar logic.
Previous singles “One Tattoo” and “Billboard” have already shown different sides of the forthcoming record. Where the former leaned into warm, jangling immediacy, “Billboard” stripped things toward an aching piano-centered arrangement. “Us, Forever” pushes outward again, using a richer and more cinematic palette to explore something psychologically claustrophobic.
That contrast appears fundamental to Wedding Season. Saleh’s world can be funny and bruised, expansive and deeply private, carefully constructed and deliberately messy.
On “Us, Forever,” those contradictions become particularly effective. Addiction isn’t presented simply through catastrophe, but through repetition—the frightening possibility that something destructive can become so familiar that its intensity eventually disappears.
And perhaps that’s what makes the song resonate beyond its immediate subject. There are relationships, behaviors and emotional patterns we return to long after understanding what they cost us. Sometimes the hardest cycle to escape isn’t the one that still feels thrilling.
It’s the one that has started to feel normal.
Holy Pinto’s “Us, Forever” is out August 21. Wedding Season arrives September 14.
