Dilettante invokes a disorientating illusion on "The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of"

"The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of" explores surrealism, remorse, and unwelcome epiphanies, and was inspired by a recent rewatching of Twin Peaks in its entirety. "I was trying to get sober and I needed something to fixate on so it became that and trying to really unwrap it all, which is impossible no matter if people say they’ve figured it all out," she reflects.

Dilettante is a suitably self-deprecating alias for Francesca Pidgeon, playing down her credentials with a pinch of salt. The Leeds-born musician, formerly of BC Camplight, started out studying avant-garde composition but these days she prefers to indulge a more pop side. Even so, she remains relentlessly experimental, her live shows spent on a knife's edge as she deftly manoeuvres between loop pedals. Life of the Party, her self-produced second album, is just as unpredictable, serving up twinkly cabaret lusciousness in one breath, and serrated guitar distortion or squelching horns the next.

Previous singles from the album explore a sudden disenchantment with roller derby ("Fun") and critique the "inherent rigidness" of monogamous relationships ("Stone"). "Easy Does It" is a sardonic hymn of gratitude; splashed in rainwater by a passing car, she wishes she'd appreciated being dry while she still could. The record is composed of these singular, idiosyncratic moments, allowing entire philosophies to blaze through gestures as unremarkable as screwing the lid back onto a tube of Colgate ("My Toothpaste Ajar").

Like Lynch, Pidgeon is unwilling to accept life at surface level, insistently peeling back its layers to see what might be lurking underneath. This compulsion ties into one of the album's larger themes: the masking behaviours adopted by neurodivergent people to adapt to social expectations, often at the expense of their true self. “I think once I’d read up about that, it felt like a lot made sense,” she says. “I was more overtly strange as a child but learned to hide it for the sake of trying to make friends."

And so the image of Audrey Horne, undercover in a casino, resonated deeply in her imagination. Pidgeon adds that the Lynchian influences weren't just lyrical, but seeped into the creative process, challenging her to trust her instincts and allow for unplanned moments. "The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of" contains reversed vocals and accidental sonic discoveries, like the layered clarinets whose eerie drone brings the album to its disorientating close. "It’s like that bit when you’re sort of between waking and dreaming," she reflects.

But unlike a dream, there's nothing about Life of the Party that feels hazy or unformed. Even at its most dissonant, there's an arresting clarity in Pidgeon's songwriting and production. While the rest of the world fumbles with half-formed resolutions, she enters the year armed with steely resolve and self-knowledge – as a person who can even binge-watch creatively.