Label: Interscope Records
Released: 8th July 2022
Sometimes the only way to exorcise your angst is to roll the car windows down, turn the speakers up and scream-sing the lyrics to an equally angsty song. Fortunately, renforshort has delivered the album set to save those feeling frustrated and bottled up. Uncork your feelings and get yelling to ‘moshpit’.
On her debut album ‘dear amelia’, renforshort navigates growing up in all its different hues. It’s a love letter to messiness and to the complex nature of our feelings; things are tangled and knotted and sometimes dark, but under renforshort’s lens, there’s a distinct beauty in that. From nursing a friend through hard times to dealing with toxic relationships, each topic is handled with sage wisdom.
A grungey sonic layer sits atop renforshort’s saccharine vocals, epitomising the album: it’s youthful and sweet, but that grit is relentless. There’s no squeaky clean pop moments – despite tracks like ‘hate the way you love me’ gorgeously shimmying towards those sensibilities, there’s a firm picture painted of late nights and streetlights and neon-lit streets that relishes in the dark instead.
With features from Jake Bugg and Travis Barker, as well as an ode to Julian Casablancas in the form of the standout ‘Julian, king of Manhattan’, ‘dear amelia’ seems to testify to its gratitude to the life-changing influences that different bands and musicians have had on renforshort. Whilst she calls upon those cornerstones of her youth, she finds herself learning how to forge her own path and her own sound. ‘dear amelia’ is a formidable debut album: one brimming with cathartic release and a wealth of intelligent takeaways.
