Cautionary Tales of Youth
True to its title, Holly Lapsley Fletcher’s third album as Låpsley details a range of nuanced emotional experiences from her mid-twenties. “Hotel Corridors” shares the intimidating sensation of having too many pathways to choose from in life, while “Dial Two Seven” touches on the English singer’s time spent in lockdown while visiting South Africa in early 2020. Working with a cast of producers including Joe Brown, Jessy Lanza, Paul White, and Greg Abrahams, Fletcher sings with tender vulnerability over understated electronic backdrops. An intimate portrait of fleeting domestic unease, “War and Peace” applies mellow sax licks and later harsher punctuations to reflect the interpersonal drama described in the song. Despite her increasingly subtle vocal work, Fletcher can still capture relatable feelings with undisguised directness. Celebrating the heady benefits of romance, she sings on “Paradise”: “I don’t need to think twice/Oh, this love is paradise.”
On third album ‘Cautionary Tales of Youth’, atop teary synths, Låpsley is untethered - the record’s electronic sound mimics the reckless placelessness that surrounds the emotions of a break-up. Debut ‘Long Way Home’ and follow-up ‘Through Water’ saw self-assertion through moody experimental music, but this time she embraces cooler, bigger, brighter, more cohesive pop sensibilities, and never loses her invaluable intention. A willingness to enjoy rediscovery means there’s little time to collapse into grief, and in hotels, high rises and planes she breaks - then regenerates - her devotion to love (“I just want a love that makes me levitate”). ‘32 Floors’ is an infectious UK garage-inspired earworm about jumping headfirst into a new relationship. ‘Smoke and Fire’ is mournful yet wistful, indebted to a vast choiry bridge and bleeping synths reminiscent of Lorde’s teen crises on ‘Pure Heroine’. Meanwhile, the arid, euphoric ‘Hotel Corridors’ exposes the loneliness of the in-between over reverberating, tugging synths. There are whispers of similarity to her queer contemporaries, too, from Shura (’Pandora’s Box’) to Years & Years (’Nightingale’), that make this break-up record much more exciting than its conveyor belt competition.
The Liverpool-hailing artist's third album is the sonic equivalent of an out-stretched hand to anyone that may be struggling
The record’s electronic sound mimics the reckless placelessness that surrounds the emotions of a break-up.
Discover Cautionary Tales of Youth by Låpsley released in 2023. Find album reviews, track lists, credits, awards and more at AllMusic.
A nourishing balm of self-acceptance, Låpsley's latest album is a full-throttled call to open up to vulnerability instead of shutting yourself off.
Alt-easy listening electronic not-pop themed around heartbreak but lacking songs. Album New Music review by Thomas H Green