Glow

When we're used to the hustle and bustle of everyday life, having all that noise taken away can leave a silence that's just as loud. For South African-born, Berlin-based artist Alice Phoebe Lou, it was an opportunity to articulate her deepest thoughts and emotions into a new album, Glow.Glow is a breathtaking work, full of visceral, star-dusted songs delivered in her crooning tones, against a backdrop of scuzzy guitars, sauntering bass grooves and mesmeric piano sequences. Glow is Alice finally allowing herself to write about those more personal subjects, in a very raw way. Most of the songs are about love; outpourings of intense feeling. 'I realised that instead of making people think, I wanted to simply make people feel,' Alice says. Some songs showcase a new style of writing, where she would play the music and just sing the first thing that came to her. 'In some moments, it's almost embarrassing how vulnerable I'm being,' she says. Yet there's nothing embarrassing about songs such as new single 'dusk', written as a tribute to friendship. Nor 'dirty mouth', which is loaded with perky guitar lines and a fun, summery vibe. On 'how to get out of love', her gentle croons recall a young Judy Garland; soft reverberations give the song a beautifully vintage yet timeless feel. On 'lover // over the moon' she sounds painfully fragile, redolent of Big Thief's Adrianne Lenker, as if the very lilting tone of her voice is a plea to her partner to be tender to her.'I went through a lot this year, like so many people,' Alice says. 'I spent more time alone than I ever had. I shaved my head. Had an ego death. Fell in love. Had my heart broken. I was a raw little mess. And that was what I wrote about.' The album provided an outlet for Alice to 'blow off steam', and one into which she poured a series of memories, thoughts and experiences. Before, she'd thought that songs needed to 'say something', to deliver some kind of profound message. The very idea of a love song seemed overdone, or trivial. 'But this album simply poured out of my heart and my subconscious, and there was no stopping the lovestruck nature of them,' she says. 'Those songs have really deep honest things in them, and I think that's the most important thing with this album, is that I could access that part of myself,' Lou says. 'It feels really good to be unfiltered.'