Holly Macve enchants on the dreamy Wonderland

Emerging in 2017 as an alt-country songstress, her flair has grown darker and more dreamlike, leading up to this year’s glowing Time Is Forever EP. With a dramatic flair and gorgeous arrangements, that collection of songs hit the mark in terms of writing and a surreal quality helped by a big assist by Lana Del Rey, whose mysterious demeanour and friendship Macve tapped into. The songs from the EP were repackaged into Wonderland, Macve’s delicate yet cinematic third album.

Macve is a master of momentum – each song unfurls with ease and sweeps you into its rhythmic poetry. She’s not afraid to write about dark, eclipsing moments – “Cold Water Canyon” details a car crash that almost killed her. With her red nails and lips, she “must have looked strange as the firemen / Lifted me out of the car wreck,” she muses. “Almost Evelyn McHale.” The sweet strings and high notes of “Beauty Queen” tells the story of an 18-year-old Macve falling drunk at the hands of a man much older, no one noticing or helping the tipsy teen. It’s a story of power (“Temptation he could not resist / My young body, my rosy lips”), the ensuing self-hatred, and recovery after meeting friends who build her up – “There’s more to life than you now know,” she tells her younger self. It shows that Macve’s darkest moments can produce the writing to heal it.

An experience doesn’t have to be harrowing for Macve to narrate it beautifully. Wonderland is filled with unavailable men and women wrapped up in their doomed promises. “Look into my eyes, tell me we’re okay / This time I’ll believe you / Like never before,” she pleads on “1995” over an austere piano. Her lover is direct and cutting on “San Fran Honey”, where he says, “There’s a lover for you, it’s not me.” She sings that she’s “Deluded enough to think you’re thinking of me,” on “To Be Loved”, while still being entranced by their better moments. But perhaps it’s a sign that those peaceful times are a mystery, almost never mentioned save for a smile on the man, when her gloomier nights are given more room. “Suburban House” sees her spiralling, waiting for a man to come home, while he's out, catching a stranger’s eye, “imagin[ing] a life / Fishing colors whilst I’m blue.”

Though their actual collaboration is a little simple and stilted for both artists’ skill level, Wonderland is filled with the kind of dreamy-eyed ennui that Del Rey rose to prominence on. The album could stand to be a little more inventive, but the stories in each track are worth sticking around for, especially when you’re hit with lines like “I kissed my beautiful bruises and thanked God for the very first time,” “Don’t know if it’s the weather or fluoxetine but lately I’ve been able to remember my dreams,” or, with a Christmas scene where her partner gifts her a Sylvia Plath book for his falling star. “I questioned why you felt I was falling rather than shooting,” she laments.

It’s fitting that Wonderland is bookended with two stunners on self-worth. She opens the title track shrugging off doubt (“No man will ever leave my world dark”) but falters on the closer, “Dreamer”, where someone’s doubt shakes her, crooning, “I know you think if I reach too high I’ll fall.” It leads to a marvellous, roaring verse, worth quoting at length: “I know my eyes are full on moon just like Joni’s always were / You listen to her objectively, whilst I listen imagining I am her / Oh I know she was your first love and you admire her all the same / If only you could see my fire is built from her roaring flame.” How sweet it is to be proven right – keep climbing, Holly.