Fenne Lily - BREACH Review

If BREACH is Fenne Lily’s shift into adulthood-proper and a confirmation of her tone and voice, then we can expect even greater things in the future.

Fenne Lily’s second album BREACH was given a September release, after what would have been another successful summer spent drawing in fans across sunny fields up and down the continent. 2018’s On Hold, high profile slots at Green Man, and supporting Lucy Dacus whipped up interest in the indie-folker and BREACH reaches and ranges further than her debut. With 2020 cancelled, BREACH, an album about developing an identity as you enter your twenties, will have to wait for it’s festival run. In the meantime, there’s enough upbeat to get you tapping and enough heartache to get you crying. In Fenne Lily an ordinary singer-songwriter there is not; more a psychoanalyst with a tremendous ability to breach our souls alongside breaching her own mind.

Let’s start with the more upbeat, arguably where we find Lily at her most interesting. ‘Solipsism’ is borderline garage rock nestled into a folk album, which probably shouldn’t work and maybe that's why it does. While Lily’s signature whispering, echoing vocal remains, and stripped back instrumentation are removed in favour of big noise and lyrical worries about how you are perceived outside of your own mind. ‘Alapathy’ is a joyous, buoyant indie pop tune, sonically reminiscent of those M.O.R indie bands like Mumm-Ra that had one guilty pleasure of a banger and an appearance on the soundtrack of a film like 500 Days of Summer. ‘Alapathy’ rises, plateauing with rapturous energy. People still self-medicate and have fun as they get older right? As for the more tender numbers, the folk-pop of ‘I, Nietzsche’ stands out for its layers of melody, sun-kissed riffs and abstract conceptualisation. ‘Berlin’ and ‘Elliott’ are slower crawls, with distorted slowcore solos and melodic “oohs” acting as the soundtracks to our exploration of new cities, hobbies and ideas as well as soundtracking our new understandings of people we already love as friendships and relationships develop with age.

‘To Be a Woman Pt.1’ is a very effective minute and a half album opener, with a looming sense of darkness, like Fenne is staring into the void of adulthood. Fenne wonders and maybe dreads what womanhood will actually mean as she tries to alleviate the fear with calls to not “be scared”. This acts not only as a prelude to the themes of the album but also to part-Radiohead part-indie-anthem tinged single ‘To Be A Woman Pt.2’, released prior to, but not making an appearance on, the album. The down-tempo centrepieces ‘Birthday’ and ‘Blood Moon’ really tap into the despair of ageing, necessary milestones on the journey of heartache and distress in finding yourself. Lily comes to terms with the reality of past events, simultaneously noticing the rapidity at which time flies by without changing a great deal. The Blood Moon here representing the beginning of the end times, highlighting the morbidity of the monotony that comes with twenty-somethinghood.

The album peaks at ‘I Used to Hate My Body But Now I Just Hate You’, a wry and intelligent assessment of recovery after the fallout of a relationship by way of intricate piano and deep melody. Lily laments she “never got the chance to play it cool” and lists the negative strivings of change she’s identified from the relationship such as force-feeding herself book and music recommendations. After hearing her ex-partner has moved back to their parents house, she concedes it “doesn’t satisfy as it should'' and goes on, inferring there will always be something tethering them together. For four minutes of the song she channels her hatred away from herself and her body, onto the now-ex. Vitally, by the final refrain, via a shamelessly effective key change, she withdraws that hatred. Fenne has reflected, absorbed all the learnings from her time with her ex and moved on. 

Unfortunately the album tails off for the final three tracks. ’’98’ acts as a slightly ineffectual interlude to ‘Someone Else’s Trees’ which begins with her signature heavy-hearted folk but is tweaked into Americana atop moody South-Western English whisper and flecks of Spanish guitar. Heartfelt album closer ‘Laundry and Jet Lag’ worries about coughing up blood and aching bones, finding Fenne dodging the unsolicited advice of condescenders all around and ultimately settling back in after time on the road. The problem with the closing section is that it feels too settled, perhaps the maturation process during “I used to Hate My Body...”  would have been a more emphatic close to the album.

Fenne Lily’s heartfelt indie-folk has grown on BREACH, increasing its range with indie-pop hooks and slowcore solos. For a listener it’s nostalgic to hear her self-reflection as she learns and settles into her twenties, probably more productively than most of the listeners did. There are even more layers to be found in Fenne Lily, of which we hear hints in the variety of the tracks on her sophomore record, from the garage rock of ‘Solipsism’ to the Americana of ‘Someone Else’s Trees’ and the more traditional heavy-hearted folk first heard in On Hold. If BREACH is Fenne Lily’s shift into adulthood-proper and a confirmation of her tone and voice, then we can expect even greater things in the future.