ALBUM REVIEWS
There’s a distinctive feeling that ties all of Holly Humberstone’s dark, brooding songs together. Since the release of her debut single ‘Deep End’ in January 2020, the Grantham-born artist’s candid, often anguished portraits of her personal life – from losing momentum in a relationship (‘Falling Asleep At The Wheel’) to London flatshares (‘The Walls Are Way Too Thin’) – have been aptly matched to artwork awash with shades of red, black and purple. “My favourite artists create work that magics up an entirely new universe,” she said recently. “That’s what I want to do with my album and live shows.”
While Humberstone’s debut album has a decidedly on-brand title – ‘Paint My Bedroom Black’ – this track actually signals a much more optimistic outlook. “Now I’m pulling out of your driveway / Finally I’m living, not surviving,” she proclaims atop a liberating guitar riff. Still, it’s an imperfect rebirth – a coming-of-age in which Humberstone is still wrestling with all the conflicting sides of herself: the extrovert and the introvert; the Gen Z pop star and the chronic doom-scroller who can’t text her friends back.
This knotty conflict looms large on tracks like the distorted ‘Antichrist’, on which Humberstone bluntly asks herself: “Am I the Antichrist? / How do I sleep at night?” On the lush, indie-pop leaning ‘Lauren’, she apologises to a friend for being absent, while the acoustic, pared-back ‘Room Service’ finds her longing for someone to ease the loneliness of touring.
The confessional ‘Into Your Room’, meanwhile, sees Humberstone admit to her relationship flaws while also giving herself permission to fall hard. “Without you my soul is eternally doomed / You’re the centre of the universe, my sorry ass revolves around you,” she sings over plump synths, pairing unabashed romanticism with deadpan self-deprecation. These cinematic vignettes make for the album’s most intoxicating moments, whether it’s falling in love on the woozy slow dance ‘Kissing In Swimming Pools’, or two lovers looking at the same sky on the D4vd collaboration ‘Superbloodmoon’.
Alongside her piercing lyrics, Humberstone’s debut LP is all the richer because she steps out of her sonic comfort zone. Surprises arise on the layered, Bon Iver-esque ‘Baby Blues’, and brilliant ‘Flatlining’, which temporarily turns into a shifty electronic banger. Ultimately, ‘Paint My Bedroom Black’ finds the artist trying to do right by her loved ones and make sense of her own turbulent world, but it’s also a cue to listeners that things could go anywhere from here. In pursuit of an authentic sound, Humberstone proves that she’s not only inhabiting her own space – and beckoning listeners in – but also building out the walls.
Details
Holly Humberstone – Paint My Bedroom Black artwork
Release date: October 13, 2023
Record label: Polydor / Darkroom / Geffen
ALBUM REVIEWS
The leather jackets and skinny jeans worn by Noah Dillon and Chandler Ransom Lucy have become something of a signature, and the pair have hovered around the edges of the pop worlds in New York and Los Angeles for quite some time. First highlighted by NME during the Dimes Square resurgence in 2023, The Hellp have gradually stepped away from their earlier indie-sleaze imitation and leaned into something far more thoughtful. Their wild, neon-tinged party vibe has been traded for a more cinematic electronic approach that still holds onto a confident, self-aware attitude.
Dillon and Lucy started releasing music as The Hellp in 2016, with early mixtapes rooted in the chaotic nights and carefree behaviour once associated with NYC’s indie-sleaze staples like LCD Soundsystem and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Over time, though, they’ve earned a steadily growing respect from critics. That rise has come through both their underground gigs, which have included a show at London’s Corsica Studios with Fakemink as support, and through Dillon’s expanding visual work that recently reached Rosalía’s ‘LUX’ album and a pair of music videos for 2hollis.
As ‘Riviera’ approached release, the duo shared: “We knew our next project would need to be a bit more mature… we refuse to become stagnant. ‘Riviera’ is more solemn, restrained and impassioned than anything we’ve done before.” The finished album feels like Dillon and Lucy carefully balancing identity and openness, theatricality and direct emotion.
The lead release, ‘Country Road’, carries a late-night heaviness, the kind of confession you would quietly tell a friend in a club’s smoking area. Its lonely tone is surrounded by glitching electronics and a rising bridge that points to the exhaustion that follows endless nights out. Tracks like ‘New Wave America’ and ‘Cortt’ deepen what the duo mention in their liner notes as a “desperate story of the disparate Americana.” Both pieces broaden the album’s emotional landscape and offer clear-eyed commentary on reluctantly stepping into adulthood.
When ‘Riviera’ shifts into ‘Doppler’, the tone brightens for a moment as hopeful synths lift Dillon’s words about yearning and heartbreak into an emotional peak. And in the final moments of the record, The Hellp land on something instantly familiar to anyone who has drifted away from the club scene. The Kavinsky-like opening of ‘Here I Am’ nods to their early inspirations, while the closing track ‘Live Forever’ arrives with a slow, grounded maturity, built around Dillon repeating the line: “I don’t want to live forever.”
‘Riviera’ holds far less disorder than The Hellp’s earlier releases. This turn inward marks an important risk for a duo once fuelled by the momentum of a downtown New York comeback. By easing off the frenzy, The Hellp have stepped out of the party’s lingering haze and returned with a style that feels more refined and more aware of itself than anything they have created before.
