Spectreview: Fenne Lily – BREACH

Released: September 18. 2020

Indie Folk
Singer-Songwriter

-RED-

For a guide to the review color rating system, click here.

“When it all breaks down, you’re a lot like me
Separate your skin just to feel it a fraction”

Fenne Lily’s new record, following her 2018 debut On Hold, is excellent. I can’t think of a record that would be harder to pitch, though. Like countless rising UK artists, her songs are about bad love and heartbreak and personal trauma, and the gentleness with which they’re presented doesn’t do much to stick her out from the crowd. Yet if BREACH is a record of unremarkable songs, every single one is done remarkably so. Lily’s voice, unwavering and unassailable, is damn near perfect for this style of music. Her vocal hooks, and the confidence with which she delivers them, are the reason why tracks like “I, Nietzsche” and “I Used To Hate My Body But Now I Just Hate You” stick in the brain long after they’ve finished. And while there’s less of an originality in her flavor of breezy indie rock (listen to how similarly that latter song lines up with “Berlin”), her songwriting is still top-notch: she knows exactly what’s she’s going for in the head-bop of “Alapathy,” the folky arpeggiation of “Elliott” and the stately bounce of “Solipsism”. And of course, there’s her tiny life truths peppered through those songs like acupuncture and delivered with an easy grace. Humble in its scope, BREACH is an incredibly easy record to enjoy, and that’s a job well done from a rising talent.

Recommended for cloudy green days.