Orla Gartland - Everybody Needs A Hero

So, you’ve come to terms with existing in an increasingly online world: bells and whistles, pits of despair and everything else in between. That is but the first aspect of modern life to be examined in ‘Everybody Needs A Hero’, and Orla Gartland hasn’t wasted much time in finding a new hyper fixation. This time, her own relationship becomes the focus of spiralling confusion.

An album of utter duality, ‘Everybody Needs a Hero’ is a second record of privilege and pain, joy and frustration, peace and chaos - as opener ‘Both Can Be True’ lays out, accepting all sides of yourselves and others is paramount and the simplest things can quickly become the most complex.

The delightfully rebellious ‘Little Chaos’ loudly bounces off the walls of any metaphorical box, while ‘Simple’ finds unrivalled solace in their corners. The Declan McKenna-featuring ‘Late To The Party’ suppresses jealousy of the echoes in someone else's head, while ‘Backseat Driver’ acknowledges the voices in your own. Lavishly frenzied soundscapes twist and turn around the odd acoustic ballad, mature tracklist curation showing an artist truly in her stride.

Although this feels like an expansive, dramatised sandbox, the intimate and profoundly aching tracks like ‘Mine’ remind us that this is no work of fiction, just an accurate reflection of the emotional spectrum that long-lasting love endures. It’s not quite a concept album but one very much focused on blowing up a specific type of human connection and analysing the cracked lines of each fragment. When we close out with the titular admission, Orla reaches a place where she can recognise all these issues and still feel belonging - and so should we.

While such a deeply introspective exercise may not sound like a common idea of fun, and some serious existentialism sure hits along the way (‘The Hit’: “Where do I start, where do you end?”, ‘Who Am I?’: “If I’m your everything who am I?”), chasing these trains of thought has never been so much engaging. If anyone can make a great album from musings that would otherwise remain in couples therapy, it’s Orla Gartland.