Lola Younger’s fierce, humorous and assertive songs run on outsized feelings, the 23-year-old singer emboldened and eventually embracing every part she has to supply. ‘This Wasn’t Meant For You Anyway’, Younger’s first full-length album, strikes with an auteur-like contact to its manufacturing; opulent soul set items stand tall subsequent to uncooked, scratchy indie tunes, all of which see the south Londoner face want in its many issues. It’s a set that feels equally empowered and tormented. Or, as one Instagram commenter put it, that is music that would make a listener “need to choose up a fridge and throw it”.
There’s fact to that assertion, nevertheless hyperbolic it could sound. By contending lyrically with shallowness and intrusive ideas, Younger has discovered a faithful fanbase on-line who reward her for the way in which she takes lovers and extra, erm, informal companions to process. She first broke via because the vocalist behind the 2021 John Lewis Christmas advert; even when three years is a near-eternity in pop, it definitely would have been troublesome to foresee her at some point dropping the c-bomb in addition to singing nakedly a few schizoaffective dysfunction analysis.
Not one of the materials from earlier mixtapes nor final yr’s ‘My Thoughts Wanders And Generally Leaves Fully’ venture seems right here. The latter’s ‘Don’t Hate Me’ was a streaming smash, and will have been included as a way to profit playlisting; its absence, nevertheless, permits ‘This Wasn’t Meant For You Anyway’ to current itself as a brand new and cohesive imaginative and prescient for Younger’s future. The album’s overarching temper is highly effective however unshowy, as evidenced by a shifting spoken phrase outro.
Younger has a knack for storytelling that feels actual and even unflattering. The emotional drive of her ache all through ‘Immodest’ propels its boom-bap preparations, whereas on the flipside, she radiates the cathartic levity of the ‘woman who’s going to be okay’ meme on ‘Stroll On By’, an anthem centred on reclaiming company. “Stated you bought nowhere to go / Nicely, you could possibly begin with the elevate to the bottom flooring,” she sings over animated drum beats. It appears like the start of a journey in the direction of a peace Younger didn’t permit herself in her earlier music.
Settling into younger maturity is never a linear path, she continues to remind us, and it comes with loads of indecision and setbacks. However the album additionally finds a quiet freedom in realizing that nothing is assured, so that you may as effectively fuck round and have enjoyable (‘Massive Brown Eyes’, the doo wop-infused ‘Messy’). It’s a framing that additionally provides her license to roam via themes of sexual freedom on ‘Fuck’.
Although Younger’s particular sort of craving and bluntness could also be indebted to SZA, she possesses the real star energy to additional develop an already sturdy inventive id. It is a file that at all times stays certain of itself, even in its deepest, darkest moments.
Particulars
- Launch date: June 21
- Report label: Island
