Alice Phoebe Lou
Oblivion
NETTWERK
At a time when engaging with any form of media can easily become overwhelming, Alice Phoebe Lou returns us to our cribs with soft, sentimental ballads patiently guiding us through the treacherous waters of grief, love, and the choppy oblivion in between. Recorded in Berlin with longtime collaborators Ziv Yamin and Dekel Adin, Oblivion traces its fingers along the lines of isolation and transition. With 2023’s Shelter LP still rippling over her acoustic-folk reputation, this sixth album is an introduction into the world of Alice Phoebe Lou at her most intimate and her most creative.
It seems as though Lou’s inspiration still lies within relics of the past, as she reflects on personal growth and rekindling snuffed-out flames with a psych-folk vocal flair that recalls Jessica Pratt and hymnal-like songwriting that brings Nick Drake to mind. And yet there’s a beautiful mystery in Oblivion, as heard in Lou’s prior bodies of work, as we’re shielded from the subject of her songs, a figure who can never seem to be fully known. When “Mind Reader” poses vulnerable questions toward a kind of lace silhouette (“I’m not a mind reader / but I’ll try for you”), what ultimately forms from the shadows is a mirrored reflection of Lou in her pursuit for grounding, cradled by hope. On the album’s title track, Lou drapes us in her world of pearl opulence as the opening piano feels like a meteor shower turning to crystal rain. Some of the drops cut close to the skin, like when Lou’s query of “Am I crumbling, too?” echoes throughout the song.
Consistently growing closer to herself as well as more profound as a songwriter, Lou’s star has risen as she’s traveled the world with artists like Clairo, Men I Trust, and Remi Wolf. Her audience has multiplied, and with her musical progression constantly closing in on vulnerability and dark places, Lou is proof that traction can be gained in the uphill battle against Gen Z’s irony and elder Millennials’ mockery of anything deemed “sad-core.” As the songs are stripped of the pop production heard on 2021’s Glow, Oblivion requires your full attention. The album is a lot like candlelight in a dark room: a sense of comfort illuminating the shape of a bed or a couch—or maybe even another person—that may go ignored as one becomes transfixed by the flame itself. That sense of distraction seems to weigh on Lou, too. Even with her desperation to see the room for what it is, we only see the vulnerability of an artist coming to know herself.
The symbolism of shadows materializes in many of Oblivion’s tracks as we observe rays of Alice Phoebe Lou’s great inner light flicker through her lyrics like the sun through great oak trees in February—cold, moving within a dark place, vaguely reminiscent of the orange glow of summer strolls. In this greater diptych of light and dark, cold and warm, we’re invited to peer into the power of earnestness as it cuts through both sides to reveal something whole right at the center, a place Lou calls “oblivion.” In yearning for it, we learn just how starved we as a culture are of this kind of poetic naming of sorrowful joy, and how Lou opens the floor like Leonard Cohen once did. For the heavier minds and faint of heart, this album gently demands to be heard alone in a silent room.
