Over fidgety, impatient keys, Lala Lala – UK-born, US-based Lillie West – declares her intention to leave. “Get me out of America,” she whispers, frustrated, on opener Car Anymore. Yet West’s fourth album (and first for Sub Pop) is about stillness – or trying to fight the urge to run.
After darting between Chicago, New Mexico, Reykjavík and London, West found love in Los Angeles and started to put down roots. But Heaven 2 (produced by Jay Som’s Melina Duterte) is shrouded in uncertainty, with cloaks of reverb, and lyrics buried beneath breathy deflection. Scammer toys with the romantic tension of threatening to split town, over an austere soundscape of purring synths and crisp snare, while Anywave battles a crisis of self – “If I existed, I don’t any more” – across bleary sirens and a spinning drum machine, like a nihilist sibling to Lorde’s Melodrama.
Closer to the sonic loneliness of West’s recent instrumental album than her pop-driven indie rock singles, Heaven 2 sits in limbo, with a mid-tempo claustrophobia that can feel numbing and repetitive. It’s a shame that the album’s most interesting elements – an earthy, freeing saxophone from longtime collaborator Sen Morimoto, and snatches of rusted, metallic electronics – are often confined to a track’s final moments; Tricks stands apart for West’s sudden vocal assertiveness and the aching back-and-forth of a violin. Amid the tension, This City offers a rare moment of release: a soaring drone slices through the sky as West has a gorgeous, cinematic realisation about sticking around: “I wish I was at a party, and you would catch my eye,” she ventures, heart-on-sleeve. “Having never seen each other, we’d start it all tonight.”
