Billie Marten’s fourth album starts with a hum. A crystalline exhale that warbles across three minutes of softly strummed guitar and slowly swelling strings. The track itself is a demo, titled “New Idea” after the throwaway filename Marten had initially used to save it to her laptop. It’s a reset button and a palette cleanser. An invitation to unfurrow your brow and drop your shoulders. To listen. By the time her vocals roll in on “God Above”, you’re already caught in the slipstream of Drop Cherries – which, it quickly transpires, is no bad thing.
Since she was discovered as a Yorkshire schoolgirl on YouTube aged 12, Marten has made music rooted in English folk tradition. Her album before this, Flora Fauna (2021), took leave of that. Out went the bare-bones production and whispered words, replaced by noodling beats and left-field compositions. Now, on her fourth record and second since splitting from Sony, she does away with alt-rock experimentation and once again embraces the dulcet tones of her 2016 debut, this time in the name of love.
