(Hardly Art)
Lillie West’s third album steers away from lo-fi indie to impressive, light-touch dream pop
The voice of London-born, Chicago-based songwriter Lillie West, urgent with the need to be not just heard but understood, is clearer and more articulate on this dramatic departure of a third album than on the fuzzy, lo-fi slacker indie of her first two, Sleepyhead and Lamb.
Her lyrical self-analysis has changed too, from wry, deprecating one-liners to a more effortful inner vision, a desire to metamorphose. The sounds that birth this new Lala Lala are suitably watery: Lava eases you in with flutters of textured voice and fuzz, little flourishes of sax and reverb-ripping plinks of piano, dreamy with oceanic feeling. Lead single Diver finds West “swimming out towards my new life, dragged in by the undertow”, but fighting clear with a punchy, poppy chorus and bright fanfare of brass.