Some people, like Californian-songwriter Monica Aben, are just born into music. The daughter of a professional Hawaiian / Polynesian dancer mother and a vinyl-loving father, music has always surrounded Monica, who learnt to play piano and guitar at a young age, and never really stopped. Recently she’s found a growing audience on both sides of the Atlantic, leading to her performing at Future Echoes Festival in Sweden and Camden Club in London. For her latest project, Monica set out to combine two perhaps not obviously linked ideas, music and her other passion, regenerative farming. The result is her upcoming EP, Everything I’ve Ever Known, a collection that sets out to reconnect with her roots in every sense of the word. With the EP set for release next month, today Monica is premiering the latest single from it, How Free Do You Wanna Be?

Something of a torch song, How Free Do You Wanna Be is Monica’s beacon of hope, her idea of a brighter tomorrow, as she explains, “this song is my clarion call to break free from the suffocating weight of conformity and internal disillusionment. Self-censorship, out of fear of being cancelled or misunderstood, has been devastating to our culture and creativity–We have forgotten what artists are for“. Ultimately perhaps it’s the final part of that statement that rings truest, the idea of artistic freedom existing as more than a way to make already rich people even more money, but as something that’s part of the human connection, as she sings, “I wanna be free, I don’t wanna be bought”.

While a musician singing of freedom and sticking it to the man is nothing new, Monica’s approach is suitably fresh, adding a glossy pop-sheen in the image of Basia Bulat or Natalie Prass, to a song whose message might just resonate with the folk singers of the counter-cultural movement in the 1960s. It’s clear that his new record has stirred something in Monica Aben, a desire to reconnect with her ancestors and to nature, and bring about an “entirely new reality where freedom and health aren’t conditional”. It’s ambitious sure, but how free do you want your dreams to be? Perhaps right now what we all need is a little more Monica Aben energy in the world.

Everything I’ve Ever Known is out July 26th. For more information on Monica Aben visit https://www.monicaaben.com/