The 10-track album explores the human condition from a folk songwriter’s lens, with simplistic but charming arrangements, and a frankly unbelievable level of vocal control to achieve vocal flips sure to become earworms, with a lilting tone somewhere between Dolores O’Riordan and CMAT. Behind each piece, mandolins and harmonicas sneak in, adding a touch of Americana to the record. The instrumentation, while impressive in itself, holds its real strength in the way it draws you in to the lyrical content.
The lyrics themselves are often double-edged, the first half of a phrase enticing you with the everyday and mundane before the second hits you in the face with a heart breaking realisation. A personal favourite from the album is the song ‘Satellites’ with the open tuning creating something dreamy and otherworldly about the track, while the lyrics themselves are a poignant story of being on the wrong end of a relationship - the chorus sums this hopeless situation up, “You put me into space/ Then hate me when I ask for it”. If lyrical complexity is something you value in a project, you will surely be satisfied with Annabelle Dinda’s wordsmithery, being maybe the only artist I’ve ever heard use the word ‘metamorphosing’ in the middle of a verse.
A particularly uncomfortable point in the album is ‘Gunpoint, Headlock’ - essentially an anxious spiral poured into a track, and this comes through not just in the lyrics but also in the chromatic ascent through the piece, reaching higher and higher points until the bridge, where you think that surely the tension must break, but it continues with screeching violins until right before the last chorus. The lyrical violence of the song- “a kid killing soldiers in his video game” - pairs with the unsettling concept that thinking, living and dying are all, to Dinda, ‘just flipping out the same coin’.
Track 7 on the album, ‘The Hand’, is one you will likely have heard if you’re on social media, and it was at this point in the album I realised I had heard some of Dinda’s music recently and saved it to a folder of my favourite finds on Instagram. The track highlights the patriarchal structures of society, and the astute and cutting critique comes through even in the very first lyrics (and the one going viral): “Every time a guy writes a song, he’s a cowboy, a sailor/ Playing with the world in his palm like the first pioneer”. The effortless move between powerful voice and a plaintive falsetto provides the emotional crux of the song and the album as a whole, pinning down the emotional conflicts throughout.
Though not Dinda’s first album, it serves as an incredible introduction to her new work, with no songs feeling at all skippable, and it provides a jumping off point for her older work for those curious enough to dive into the discography.
Star Rating: 5/5