Låpsley weaves a beautifully tangled web on Cautionary Tales of Youth
"Cautionary Tales of Youth"
There is a thin line between immersion and escapism, and Holly Låpsley Fletcher rides it with grace.
The York talent, known as Låpsley, completes this feat in Cautionary Tales of Youth, her latest record. Its collection of songs, with its layered bedroom pop production, wraps you into a sonic web that can be soothing or overwhelming, depending on how you choose to listen.
Take the opening track, "32 Floors," as an example of this duality: the song's instrumentation primes for overstimulation, yet its lyrics are comforting of common anxieties. "It's lonely when nobody understands you / Then it all stops / And I bathe in white noise / Let myself drop in your eyes / For a minute I'm lost," Låpsley sings as an ever-growing soundscape surrounds you, shooting its flourishes to a dope beat. It is the chaos of a mind seeking peace on the cusp of finding it.
Låpsley has often discussed her struggles with depression and ADHD, highlighting music as a driving force away from the darkness. And in subsequent tracks like "Hotel Corridors," she displays that battle with descending pianos, tick-tick beats, distortion, and her silk-rich voice. The record holds this theme throughout and weaves the web that is the mind of Låpsley, more sublime with each uplifting lyric and equally grand as it wraps you up with its production.
By the time bass-bumping tracks such as "Dial Two Seven" and "Levitate" possess your limbs with their house beats, you're somewhere between immersion and escapism: are you opting into the music or opting out of the world? Maybe it is both, and that line is where the record levels; it rides it until the very end, with Låpsley never slipping one way or the other definitively. That ability to balance the music comes from her experience as an artist, which is vast and ever-growing.
Still, generational listening habits point to music as a form of escapism more than ever before, and the record has all the elements to enable this. Cautionary Tales of Youth, the album, with its webbing of rhythmic production, occasionally engulfs the empathetic messages within, losing them in its devilish charm. Depending on how you dial into this record, you can find anxiety-reducing coping mechanisms or be overwhelmed by the experience, tuning out eventually.
One route does not outweigh the other - maybe, in the end, all the album needs is a replay.
Get the Best Fit take on the week in music direct to your inbox every Friday
