The Japanese art of Kintsugi is about repair without concealment. Fusing broken pottery back together with gold-dusted lacquer, it repairs broken ceramics with a living history of their shattering — and arguably makes them even more beautiful.
Holly Humberstone's approach to music calls this concept to mind. The relationship between her dark, diaristic lyrics and the alt-pop soundscapes she threads them through with an effortlessly needling precision exemplifies the idea of broken things becoming artful.
There's no hiding, as much as Humberstone acknowledges that impulse; she comes out of a period of isolation on "Cocoon" and it's easily the most jubilant moment on her debut album, Paint My Bedroom Black. "I'm just going through something," she breezes on the hook, "Uh-huh." It's almost giddy when Humberstone sings about being a "taxidermy version" of herself over the warm grit of a '90s-indebted guitar line and swinging drum fills, delivering a singalong-ready moment: "You said you'd give me both your kidneys if I cried for help / Like, Jesus Christ, calm down."
It's the levity the singer-songwriter is able to find in on a song like this — about someone's company (and watching The O.C.) having the ability to not only re-stabilize, but re-invigorate her amid the darkness — that differentiates her from the well-worn territory of so-called sad girl music that has burgeoned increasingly in recent years. I hate that I even have to mention it, because obviously women have been writing sad songs forever, and nobody is condemning dudes for their whiny desolation — for the record, I very much encourage any and all sad girls, women and non-binary people to write songs.
Of course, for most of us, the resultant cringy rhymes don't often go beyond the walls of our bedrooms. Humberstone is an exception, having initially gained traction on BBC Radio 1 Introducing as a teenager and proceeding to explode in popularity in the depths of the pandemic. Her 2020 track "Deep End" — the lead single for her debut EP, Falling Asleep at the Wheel — was an empathetic, creaking oak trunk of a ballad for Emma, one of the three sisters she grew up with in Grantham, UK. Since then, her parents have sold her childhood home and moved to Wales, another jarring adjustment for Humberstone when she started to go out on tour and realized she wouldn't be able to truly go back home again.
It's not surprising, then, that she finds herself fixated on a room of one's own. She traded the bedroom she watched herself achieve viral fame and millions of monthly listeners from for deeply impersonal hotel rooms in anonymous cities, their yellow wallpaper threatening to swallow her whole. Who wouldn't want to paint over it?
"Playing shows can be very overstimulating, and it's hard to find little pockets of free time to recharge," Humberstone recently told NME, adding that she felt "constantly upset" at the thought of neglecting her relationships while she was on the road. Her distillation of what she wished those hotel stays would be like is put plainly on closing track "Room Service," where she imagines an alternate reality where she checks in and, "The local news is always on / There's nothing wrong."
The lower-tempo tracks, like this and the glow-in-the-dark, star-stickers-on-the-ceiling slow dance of "Kissing in Swimming Pools," feel like a blanket fort of safety that Humberstone could have built in that isolation, but she invites the listener in like it's a sleepover with her sisters. The stakes of Humberstone's connections to people are serious: there is fixing that happens at these intersections, or so she believes — whether she's the broken one or someone else is. And sometimes she worries that she's the one inflicting harm, neglecting others as she tries to care for herself amid the grind of tour life.
PMBB's lone feature is a moody duet with American singer-songwriter David Anthony Burke — who performs as d4vd — called "Superbloodmoon." It doesn't feel quite as rare or awe-inspiring as its namesake, but its brooding synth smoulder is a perfectly apocalyptic setting for Humberstone's quicksilver lilt and Burke's husky tenor to intermingle, swirling like smoke signals. The struggle of maintaining a sense of closeness through distance gets a second voicing, with Humberstone's own insular, intrusive thoughts forced to make room.
Lead single "Antichrist," with its splashy echoes and rib-spare beats, also lets her get some distance through the disguise of vocal effects. This is where Humberstone's longtime collaborator Rob Milton's work with Fred again.. and the 1975 comes through, as does the literal image of putting tape on cracked porcelain. His touch is also evident on "Flatlining," a UK garage-inspired spiritual successor to Lorde's "Supercut." But even at their most electronic (like the breakbeat DnB of "Lauren"), the tracks never lose their sense of organicity when grounded by a sterling guitar tone, or at very least Humberstone's dynamic delivery of her unvarnished truth.
"On the tube, everyone's ugly / Guess it's the unforgiving light" she sings on "Elvis Impersonators," recalling something Emma, that same sister she wrote "Deep End" about, once said. Emma has since moved to Tokyo, after a graduation that Holly was forced to miss while she was on tour. Humberstone is nostalgic for that sisterhood again on "Ghost Me," which almost postures itself as a jaunty, boot-kicking anthem beneath the (likewise unforgiving) lights of a country bar, as she sings, "Where the hell'd our childhood go? / It freaks me out, how fast we grow / The more I see, the less I know."
It's been evident since the dawn of her career that everything for Holly Humberstone is deeply felt; she writes as a way of making sense of her own emotions. Paint My Bedroom Black is a shiny and haunted — but unwaveringly hopeful— collection that sees her carve out her own kohl liner-rimmed space in the modern pop pantheon. On the album cover, she kind of looks like a superhero in plainclothes, her windswept lyric sheets clinging to the rubble of another of the world's attempts to harden her. There's a crack in everything, and that's where the alt-pop darling's unabashedly emo, gilded melodies get in.
(Geffen), (Polydor)Holly Humberstone's approach to music calls this concept to mind. The relationship between her dark, diaristic lyrics and the alt-pop soundscapes she threads them through with an effortlessly needling precision exemplifies the idea of broken things becoming artful.
There's no hiding, as much as Humberstone acknowledges that impulse; she comes out of a period of isolation on "Cocoon" and it's easily the most jubilant moment on her debut album, Paint My Bedroom Black. "I'm just going through something," she breezes on the hook, "Uh-huh." It's almost giddy when Humberstone sings about being a "taxidermy version" of herself over the warm grit of a '90s-indebted guitar line and swinging drum fills, delivering a singalong-ready moment: "You said you'd give me both your kidneys if I cried for help / Like, Jesus Christ, calm down."
It's the levity the singer-songwriter is able to find in on a song like this — about someone's company (and watching The O.C.) having the ability to not only re-stabilize, but re-invigorate her amid the darkness — that differentiates her from the well-worn territory of so-called sad girl music that has burgeoned increasingly in recent years. I hate that I even have to mention it, because obviously women have been writing sad songs forever, and nobody is condemning dudes for their whiny desolation — for the record, I very much encourage any and all sad girls, women and non-binary people to write songs.
Of course, for most of us, the resultant cringy rhymes don't often go beyond the walls of our bedrooms. Humberstone is an exception, having initially gained traction on BBC Radio 1 Introducing as a teenager and proceeding to explode in popularity in the depths of the pandemic. Her 2020 track "Deep End" — the lead single for her debut EP, Falling Asleep at the Wheel — was an empathetic, creaking oak trunk of a ballad for Emma, one of the three sisters she grew up with in Grantham, UK. Since then, her parents have sold her childhood home and moved to Wales, another jarring adjustment for Humberstone when she started to go out on tour and realized she wouldn't be able to truly go back home again.
It's not surprising, then, that she finds herself fixated on a room of one's own. She traded the bedroom she watched herself achieve viral fame and millions of monthly listeners from for deeply impersonal hotel rooms in anonymous cities, their yellow wallpaper threatening to swallow her whole. Who wouldn't want to paint over it?
"Playing shows can be very overstimulating, and it's hard to find little pockets of free time to recharge," Humberstone recently told NME, adding that she felt "constantly upset" at the thought of neglecting her relationships while she was on the road. Her distillation of what she wished those hotel stays would be like is put plainly on closing track "Room Service," where she imagines an alternate reality where she checks in and, "The local news is always on / There's nothing wrong."
The lower-tempo tracks, like this and the glow-in-the-dark, star-stickers-on-the-ceiling slow dance of "Kissing in Swimming Pools," feel like a blanket fort of safety that Humberstone could have built in that isolation, but she invites the listener in like it's a sleepover with her sisters. The stakes of Humberstone's connections to people are serious: there is fixing that happens at these intersections, or so she believes — whether she's the broken one or someone else is. And sometimes she worries that she's the one inflicting harm, neglecting others as she tries to care for herself amid the grind of tour life.
PMBB's lone feature is a moody duet with American singer-songwriter David Anthony Burke — who performs as d4vd — called "Superbloodmoon." It doesn't feel quite as rare or awe-inspiring as its namesake, but its brooding synth smoulder is a perfectly apocalyptic setting for Humberstone's quicksilver lilt and Burke's husky tenor to intermingle, swirling like smoke signals. The struggle of maintaining a sense of closeness through distance gets a second voicing, with Humberstone's own insular, intrusive thoughts forced to make room.
Lead single "Antichrist," with its splashy echoes and rib-spare beats, also lets her get some distance through the disguise of vocal effects. This is where Humberstone's longtime collaborator Rob Milton's work with Fred again.. and the 1975 comes through, as does the literal image of putting tape on cracked porcelain. His touch is also evident on "Flatlining," a UK garage-inspired spiritual successor to Lorde's "Supercut." But even at their most electronic (like the breakbeat DnB of "Lauren"), the tracks never lose their sense of organicity when grounded by a sterling guitar tone, or at very least Humberstone's dynamic delivery of her unvarnished truth.
"On the tube, everyone's ugly / Guess it's the unforgiving light" she sings on "Elvis Impersonators," recalling something Emma, that same sister she wrote "Deep End" about, once said. Emma has since moved to Tokyo, after a graduation that Holly was forced to miss while she was on tour. Humberstone is nostalgic for that sisterhood again on "Ghost Me," which almost postures itself as a jaunty, boot-kicking anthem beneath the (likewise unforgiving) lights of a country bar, as she sings, "Where the hell'd our childhood go? / It freaks me out, how fast we grow / The more I see, the less I know."
It's been evident since the dawn of her career that everything for Holly Humberstone is deeply felt; she writes as a way of making sense of her own emotions. Paint My Bedroom Black is a shiny and haunted — but unwaveringly hopeful— collection that sees her carve out her own kohl liner-rimmed space in the modern pop pantheon. On the album cover, she kind of looks like a superhero in plainclothes, her windswept lyric sheets clinging to the rubble of another of the world's attempts to harden her. There's a crack in everything, and that's where the alt-pop darling's unabashedly emo, gilded melodies get in.
