Moving from Chicago to New Mexico, Reykjavík, then London and now Los Angeles, the UK-born artist Lillie West’s experimental indie dream pop is a fascinating release about restless escapism while trying to stay where she is. Produced by Jay Som’s Melina Duterte, its a stylish range of sounds, from the opener Car Anymore, with it’s itchy piano, driving rhythm, fluttering saxophone and synth textures, and her breathy announcement “Get me out of America something in the water makes me sick.” On the slower, syncopated Even Mountains Erode, a song about trying to slow down, West sings: “There are symbols and signs, you're missing your life.” There is inner division constantly at play and the album title is inspired by the way modern life gives huge accessiblity to pleasures of all kinds and yet by this very fact, the so-called Utopian Heaven 2 is a cheap thrill. Arrow brings a distorted electro-pop which seems to be inspired by her falling in love in LA, despite its difficulties: “You are a danger, a flood and a fire / But I′ll take the risk to live in desire.” Scammer plays on the idea of restless skipping town over an austere, whispery landscape. Does This Go Faster? seems to sum up the torn emotions of the album in an easy, throwaway-style dreampop of the empty Heaven 2 idea: “I don't live here, I don't live anywhere / It's a choice I made, I was prepared/ It's not that serious / It’s not that hard to forget / I know I can't go backwards / But I don't believe it yet / Nothing on earth is free / Even in ecstasy / Hell is the day after the party.” This City, perhaps the standout, is a thumping, thrumming indie pop number that seems to soar with some escape with a constant drone sound (“I can leave this city But I can't get very far / Vines and bricks and light / Cement and molten tar”) but pulled back in, she remains in limbo. An interesting, original sonic expression of feelings many of us have been through. Out on Sub Pop.
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