Track of the Week: ‘M4 Windy’ arrives as Pem’s most beautiful song yet
In May, in Brighton, on a festival afternoon, I stepped inside a church to sit down for a minute and catch a set I knew would be beautiful. Pem walked onto the stage underneath the looming stained glass windows, and instantly, I was right. In fact, beautiful was an understatement.
This came a year after the release of Cloud Work, her 2024 EP that was an obvious five out of five perfect marker for me. Across those four tracks, Pem deals with grief with poignancy that is so tender you almost don’t dare to touch. You almost don’t want to breathe, let alone sing along, because to interrupt would feel like blasphemy.
It feels that way at her shows too, whether she’s playing a church or even just the grotty gig room at the Shacklewell Arms. With a voice like that, so unique and unmistakable, Pem’s talent sits like a natural gift in some wobbly vocal cords as that timbre could silent a stadium, I swear.
She could sing a shopping list and it would be great, but on top of it all, Pem’s songwriting is just as beautiful. Cloud Work was proof, follow-up single ‘Ellipses’ was further proof with a bit more bite to it, and now, ‘M4 Windy’ makes the point again with her most luscious ballad to date.
It was a song that seemed to fall out of her as she said, “I was driving on the M4 one day during that bout of gale force winds we had in early 2025. I was singing something to myself about a tornado and recorded a voice note of my tornado mumbles. My phone saved it as ‘m4’.I started writing when I got home, and ‘m4 windy’ was finished an hour later.”
But sometimes the best art comes simply, like this track and the gorgeous central lyric of “loves me and my mind, you like to call me angel.”
Built simply too, the instrument knows that it doesn’t need to do much. Instead, the sonics are classic and cinematic without being overbearing. Pem’s voice stays front and centre, by Ali Chant’s production turns this into something so special, deserving of a soundtrack spot in Pride and Prejudice or something.
Just like Cloud Work, ‘M4 Windy’ is almost too beautiful to try and articulate. It’s simply a song to sink into and let wash over you, perfect for the days where the nights creep in earlier and the weather grows wilder.
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