🔗 Share this article

In the track "Miss America", audiences are placed inside a hotel room near JFK airport, where the musician learns a devastating update that her dad has cancer diagnosis. This Sunderland-born performer had been traveling America for the first time, playing alongside indie band Kero Kero Bonito, and abruptly grief casts a shadow, tinging all with melancholy. Unsteady keys and hushed orchestration underscore dark dispatches from the tour van: "Cattle farm and broke down shack / Shopping centers, illicit trades, anxious moments."

Walton's soft vocals come across in a flat style, while the album's tension arises from her keen penmanship—mixing fiction, folksy sayings, and blunt personal notes—along with surprising rich textures. Not many tracks this year showcase more potent storytelling flair than "Shelly", which describes the death of an animal and spirals into a fuel-soaked confrontation, evoking literary works illuminated by flickers of distorted cello. Anxious, quiet verses with resonating, plucked guitar transition into grand refrains, and her voice electronically altered to become a presence all-knowing and menacing.

Listeners might previously know Walton from her work as a music creator, disc jockey, and member to bands such as Caroline. The album's sonic turns reflect her diverse career. The first track "Sometimes" bursts with fanfare, like an ensemble caught unawares, whereas "Born Again Backwards" drastically increases the tempo with an intense, stunning, looping percussion. Thick walls of sound, skillfully mixed by a long-term partner, seem both gnarly and ethereal, and her morbid, magical thinking culminate on highlight "Lambs", a song that briefly transforms into a twirling dance. "I hope your existence doesn't conclude with dying," Walton pleads, exuding poignant dark comedy.