At first glance, Honeymoon Phase is a guitar ballad, centred, like most others, on memories and melancholy and the oblivion rendered by time that we try so hard to fight. “Ocean days swept over rolling waves / Lost to the touch and taste of soft summer rains,” OSKA begins, a nostalgic couplet made numb and distant by the passing of seasons. If you listen closely, OSKA does the same with her words, clinging to the last vowels for just a moment that the ending consonants almost feel like part of another word, the film of some faint dream: “day-s,” “wav-es,” “ta-ste,” “rai-ns.” But as much as “Honeymoon Phase” is about the past and the beauty encased within it (“The golden hours, the sun kissed your perfect mouth”), kept close to her chest in her lower register, it also breaks away from that, into OSKA’s breathtaken falsetto and the present. Guitars and harmonies start to layer, and the drums kick in. This is the moment where everything starts to change, the realization that this romance has passed its expiry date, that you’re experiencing the worst possible feeling towards yourself: indifference (“‘Cause I don’t know me”). And yet, OSKA doesn’t seem to harbour any hatred or disgust or rage or even regret for that; she sees a moment to smile, a bittersweet and weathered parting smile: “But let me say, I really loved our honeymoon phase.”