Lomelda – Thx

References to driving and car journeys crop up time and again on the second album from Hannah Read, aka Lomelda. A hallucination appears to her in the glow of headlights on Interstate Vision, a fleeting moment of transcendence witnessed on a routine drive home. On Nervous Driver, meanwhile, she measures her temper in asphalt, apologising to a close friend for “flying down highways” too quickly when things get difficult. A childhood memory forms the basis of the achingly pretty Out There, which recalls telephones lines and the remains of a forest fire spied from a backseat window, while her steady strumming on From Here is like wheels turning, the meandering lead guitar like the lazy contours of the open road. 

But if Thx is imbued with the spirit of long, contemplative car journeys, then it’s a road trip taken in a vehicle with no rearview mirror. All throughout the record, Read is fixated on moving forward, yearning to reach a tangible destination that might spell some sort of fulfilment or closure. “Interstates are not what I want,” she sings on the opener, before asking “Can you feel me now? Do you know me yet?” in a punctured yet powerful voice that gushes melancholy like it’s going out of style. Indeed, Read’s delivery is instinctually affecting, inflected with a quivering perseverance that sounds raw and urgent, as if the experiences she’s recounting had freshly happened to her before she hit 'record'.

Such is power of Read's quieter register that when she full-on bellows on the closing track Only World, it’s like a dam bursting forth all at once. “When I get it, I’ll give it all I’ve got this time” she sings, before channeling her conviction into a vibrato wail that’s like a train thundering through a station, the accompanying piano and guitar like the fixtures and foliage rattling in its wake. The instrumentation is brilliantly subtle throughout Thx, shuffling along in odd time signatures while tracing breezy spirographs around main attraction. But here, the band switches to downpour while Read yells into the storm.

It makes for a thrilling moment of catharsis in the album’s closing moments that doesn't mark the end of a journey for Lomelda, but rather teases the unknown possibilities that lie ahead; the sound of a magnetic new artist shifting up a gear.

Listen to: Interstate Vision, Out There, From Here