This is the debut album from Grantham 23-year-old Holly Humberstone, but in many ways it feels like her second. Such is the strange state of pop music today, where TikTok offers success in seconds but laying the foundations for anything approaching a lasting career seems to take longer than ever.
For example, it’s historically been common for acts who triumph in the BBC’s annual January poll, a reliable roster of next big things, to release a hit debut album shortly afterwards. Ellie Goulding, Sam Smith and Years & Years are among those who did. Humberstone placed second in the BBC’s Sound of 2021 list, then won the similar, even higher profile, Brit Award for Rising Star in early 2022. There was an album-length collection of songs from early EPs, Can You Afford to Lose Me? a year ago, and meanwhile she’s been gigging in major American venues supporting superstar Olivia Rodrigo, as well as headlining Brixton Academy herself. No wonder it feels like this can’t possibly be her first full release.
The content here also sounds like familiar second album material. It was mostly written between concerts all over the world, and the major theme is feeling isolated from friends, lovers, family and home. The song Lauren is named after her best friend and begins: “I used to drive you home but now I just drive you crazy,” while the drums clatter energetically and softly spoken synths keep the mood melancholy. Room Service is a sweet acoustic song of longing from the perspective of someone who has experienced way too many hotel bedroom meals. Elvis Impersonators finds her imagining what her sister is doing on the other side of the world.
Like Rodrigo, and the queen of this kind of thing, Taylor Swift, she’s also adept at depicting the love lives of young women in a way that wins obsessive fans but might cause outsiders to wonder quite what the fuss is about. “Like, Jesus Christ, calm down,” she sings on the bouncy folk pop of Cocoon, and must be talking to herself given that she also describes herself as the Antichrist for instigating a breakup, and cries, “Without you, my soul is doomed,” on the shiny Eighties bop Into Your Room.
Her soft, digitally layered voice, and the tasteful mix of acoustic and electronic instruments behind her, don’t do such a good job of conveying her anguish. But the romance, and her loneliness, are ever present, and set her up nicely for her real second album.
