Alice Phoebe Lou - Glow Review
All-in-all, Glow makes for a very rewarding listen. The album is a resplendent rollercoaster of emotions and feelings. We go from utter despair to breathless, pure elation in a blink of an eye.
Glow – the new album from Alice Phoebe Lou – will be released on Friday 19th March, and, as a truly independent artist, this album showcases not only the diversity of her vocal range but also the wide variety of genres she covers.
It is a reverberating, soulful fusion of indie and alternative, bedroom pop, neo-folk, blues, and jazz, with nods to Country, sprinkled with punky grunge vibes and a dusting of synth-pop. This album certainly offers something for all tastes, so is not to be dismissed by anyone who does not like jazz.
Alice Phoebe Lou perfected her unique sound and style by busking on the streets of Berlin after leaving her native South Africa, aged just sixteen, to embark on a gap-year that is still going strong eleven years later. After starting by performing as a fire dancer, she settled upon music as her preferred career choice and set upon a new path of extensive touring and plentiful collaborations, which were promptly followed by her self-released Momentum EP and full-length debut album Orbit in 2016. This all helped to amass many loyal international fans and supporters. But it was the live version of her track ‘She’ going viral in 2017 that cemented her place in the industry. The track was selected for the soundtrack of the Susan Sarandon production of BOMBSHELL: THE HEDY LAMARR STORY, and earned Alice a place on the Oscars shortlist for Best Original Song. Then, in March 2019, she released her second album Paper Castles and embarked on another international and European tour, and ten out of her twelve European dates were played to sold-out audiences.
Glow being Alice's third full-length release is still just as thoughtful lyrically as her previous offerings but, with Lockdown forcing her to spend more time alone, the resulting songs are obviously more personal in content. Alice herself offered this perspective: “This album is an outlet. A place I blew off steam. I poured my most personal feelings, experiences and realisations into it, and I stand before you completely naked, encouraging you to go to that place within yourself.”
The opening track, ‘Only When I’, is a beautiful, impassioned jazz-spiked number that shimmers and soars. She serenades us with lyrics such as “I will spread your love so thickly, so I can reminisce some more” over a backdrop of lush piano that wouldn’t sound at all out of place on a Melody Gardot album.
Title track ‘Glow’ brings things more uptempo, with more of a cheerful bedroom-pop vibe, and her last single ‘Dusk’ is another jazzy number, filled with clarinet notes and joyful piano over a steady beat, with intimate and optimistic lyrics like “She smiles, and everything will be all right, In the world, the whole wide world,”. Alice said this of the track that “‘Dusk’ is inspired by closeness and intimacy with a dear friend; holding each other up, looking at one another with admiration, sharing, giving, full of love and promise. It’s inspired by this feeling of understanding and unconditionally being there for another. The song is also inspired by the feeling of euphoria one can experience on a dancefloor with the person you care about most — the elation and transcendental feeling of dancing and laughing and moving with your closest friend, to the point that everything disappears and worries cease for just one night". In a world that is currently so fraught and riddled with anxiety, this is a refreshing perspective.
The poignant, melancholic, and utterly heart-wrenching ‘How To Get Out Of Love’ is striking in its simplicity. It is the most pared-back of all of the tracks on the album, and this is used to great effect. The beauty in the vocal delivery beguiles you, lulling you despite the starkness of theme. The lyrics portray a very raw, visceral relationship breakdown, and the desperate pleadings of lyrics such as “I think I need your words to feel like daggers in this love, because only then could I give up the holes in my heart” will give even the most cynical of listeners food for thought.
The most recent single release, ‘Dirty Mouth’, is both lyrically fun and upbeat, with a tempo that fluctuates wildly. "I've got baggage it's got big wheels, I've got a little dog biting at my heels, I'm not gonna heal you, not gonna make your dreams come true,” she warbles, over a very jangly backbeat. ‘Lonely Crowd’ is another album highlight with its interesting 60s-influenced rhythms, fused with both jazz and indie pop. And ‘Lover/Over The Moon’ charms with its heartfelt sincerity.
Closing track ‘Lovesick’ is yet another diversely influenced track that you can't definitively describe, bouncing from jazz-fused to bedroom pop vibes, to all-out indie-doused number, and serves as a great conclusion to this whirlwind of an album.
All-in-all, Glow makes for a very rewarding listen. The album is a resplendent rollercoaster of emotions and feelings. We go from utter despair to breathless, pure elation in a blink of an eye, which certainly keeps the listener engaged. Lou is an excellent storyteller, too; all of these songs have a spellbinding and haunting quality to them which offers the listener a form of escapism. They instantly transport you to a luscious expanse of a soundscape where you can forget about the dreary tediousness of lockdown. I would advise you to just switch off, focus on her voice, and allow her breathy, mesmerising vocals to sweep you away to a sunny afternoon.