Her rhetoric is armed for connecting her personal experiences to those of her listeners, a quintessential partnership for any good album.

Time’s ticking hands are the painters of “The Big Picture” in Fenne Lily’s newest album by the same name. She is constantly coming to terms with her coming of age in the ten track project where an ever evolving pool of ideas reflects the last 2 years of her life. Her recollections are completely nonlinear, replicating the unsteadiness that rang across the world both collectively and personally for the singer-songwriter.

In the wake of all the changes she sings of, Fenne Lily’s husky vocals are constant. They cross over thick lines of bass to form the X that marks the spot in her “Map of Japan”, the opening track that instigates a wanderlust found scattered throughout the entire album. “We never could make a good plan/Even when we weren’t that busy” she confesses in the first chorus, “And I’m getting tired/Of looking at the same old sky”. The urge for going is posed again three tracks in where she lays out a conversation from the past: “And he said, ‘So, do you ever wanna leave here?’/And she said, ‘Well, that depends on the day’”.

It’s made especially clear that nothing is ever truly as easy as it seems in a song like “2+2”. Lily is introspective and consequently honest about her hesitancy in the directions love and life have taken her. Vocals quiver and harmonize with guitar in the latter half, begging to be heard out in this vulnerable state of uncertainty.

Central tracks “Superglued” and “Henry” sail the same acoustic seas as the rest of the album and will blend together if you let them. They’re confessions of regret as much as they are pleas with words so carefully crafted and intertwined with the melody that you don’t truly feel the sadness within them until after a few intentional listens. Sadness, however, is not Lily wants you to take away from this album: “These songs explore worry and doubt and letting go, but these themes are framed brightly”.

If seasons can exist inside the glass globe that encases the topsy turvy house centered in the cover, spring would be the most fitting choice for this album. Especially in the second half, themes seem brighter and more hopeful as if they’ve been woken up by unexpected rays of sunshine. “Pick” earns our narrator her stripes in the folk genre with lyrics that sit adjacent to the playful and fast paced guitar plucking. They’re almost poking fun at the structure of time, raising the possibility that it is something that we can choose. “Did I pick a bad time to love you?” or “Did I pick a bad time to write you?” appeal directly to hesitancy, but the way her voice bounces off of itself in a line like “Call me if you’re thinking of going forever” leaves the door open.

Similarly, the next two songs reclaim some glory from time’s previously established godliness. They serve as a glimmer of hope the album needed and understand that weariness is just another rung on the ladder towards moving forward. “In My Own Time” holds what may just be the album’s standout lyric: ““Sometimes i feel like i’m just killing time here/Or maybe it’s killing me”. Luckily, they evolve with time into “Hold me up sometimes/We’ll be just fine”.

“Red Deer Day” mimics that same structure, turning “For the longest time/I’ve imagined I am alone and now it’s real” into “I’m alright/Or I will be in time”. Its melody sways like a solo dancer, but the truth is that the progression creates something like a campfire song that you could sing with friends.

In a display of mastery in the indie genre, “Half Finished” plays with melodies that are quieter than they’ve ever been, drawing a line of best fit across the data she has collected in hindsight and singing kindly enough to change as if she’s trying to befriend its fated nature. She closes out this touching album with a point of reference for her progress: “They’ve got a fear of things changing, but I don’t mind/I made no promises to stay but I’ll try”. The serenity of this track is quietly uplifting, agreeing to forgive moments that went unfinished.

Time, as Fenne Lily puts it in “Dawncolored Horse”, is a product of the God on the wall. It serves as a constant presence that oversaw a period of life where characters who “said a lot/And nothing at all” constantly straddled the line of staying in place or leaving. Her longing is restlessly captivating, eternally searching for an answer as it sits on the precipice of a new beginning. This grants Lily permission to look back on this chapter in the same way you would look back on an empty apartment before leaving for good; sad to see it go, yet ready to start anew elsewhere. An album that was “written in an effort to self soothe” has restored balance in the uncertainties of life, and lovingly accepts its phases as they wax and wane. Her rhetoric is armed for connecting her personal experiences to those of her listeners, a quintessential partnership for any good album.