Label: Transgressive
Released: 29th April 2022
Let’s Eat Grandma’s second album, ‘I’m All Ears’, was a revelation. The kind of landmark future pop record that gets cited as a pivotal musical reference point for years to come, its follow up should have been a lap of honour.
Life doesn’t tend to work out that way in the real world, though. In the time between then and now, Jenny Hollingworth and Rosa Walton have experienced the full gambit. Personal losses, evolving relationships, broken hearts and new horizons – ‘Two Ribbons’ is a remarkable album forged in the difficult moments, but one that never fails to provide fresh hope to come.
Continuing their previous record’s high-sheen pop master class, ‘Two Ribbons’ is far from more of the same. As the internal relationships that shape the band change – Rosa and Jenny needing to find more space for themselves to process and progress – so does their songwriting style. Writing more individually focused tracks, vocal duties more often tend to fall to one or the other. It brings a new emotional clarity, one that befits the increasingly organic instrumentation that accompanies it.
The grief of ‘Watching You’ avoids becoming morbid or morose while never betraying the raw, desolate pain of loss. At the other end of the spectrum, ‘Levitation’ dares to escape into a world of imagination, reconnecting through the comfort of creativity.
It’s the closing title-track that really stands out, though. With the shine and sparkle stripped away, it’s not just the best thing Jenny and Rosa have ever put their names to; it’s the sort of song that stops time still on every play. Generational talents letting their deepest thoughts bleed freely; while it’s an album that might pose more questions than it answers, its inherent quality is never open to debate. On the biggest of stages or in the smallest, most introspective moments, ‘Two Ribbons’ is nothing short of a masterpiece.
