Lila Tristram's "Martha May" broods with shades of light and dark

Although she studied classical music at Goldsmiths, it was a love of artists like Joni Mitchell and Nick Drake which first sparked Lila Tristram's songwriting: as a student she found herself making plucky cameos at at folk nights, and developing a unique fingerpicking technique which strangers still quiz her about. "Martha May" builds on the heady dynamics established in previous singles, treating her pain as a wall to be fearlessly scaled, slowly tracing the thoughts that swarm around her psyche. "Martha come back, you're not a criminal," she pleads, and if the lyrics feel ambiguous, the ache in her voice hits home.

Yet even one year ago, Tristram says, a song like "Martha May" couldn't have happened. After experiencing a series of setbacks including being made redundant, she felt adrift about her next steps as a musician – uncomfortable even putting her ideas in the earshot of others. But it's those moments of feeling untethered that free an artist to take risks. Escaping London for the Wiltshire countryside, Tristram and her band started recording with open minds, hunkering down in a remote woodland studio to see what might unfold.

Forged in this collaborative spirit, "Martha May" is filled with experimental details, from the lurching, off-kilter percussion and thundering bass, to the eerie synthesizer-processed violin riff which draws the track to its unsettling close. There are echoes of the brooding melancholy of artists like Lucinda Chua and Bess Atwell, both creative touchstones for Tristram.

If her early work had the quiet intimacy you'd expect from a lockdown project, the past two years have seen her tread more expansive ground, nature at her elbow. In an Instagram post, she described recording sessions "punctuated with walks among bluebells or apple picking for cider making". Last year's Home EP was so tied to the landscape that even its vinyl sleeves came fashioned out of Ordnance Survey maps. Maybe this connection with the land brought the band closer to their instincts, tuning out the distractions of city life.

"When we were in the studio recording this song, it just became darker and heavier until we really fell into it," Tristram explains. "This song isn't about an ex or any kind of romantic love. It's about losing a friend, and for me, that's the hardest loss I have ever had to face." But if "Martha May" is a farewell song, it's also part of an artistic rebirth for Tristram. She's found a way to trust her songs to breathe, to let them become as sparse or as densely layered, as abrasive or as subtle as the moment demands.