Matilda Botwid, Mattis Andersson and Joar Andersén, three school-friends make up Echo Ladies a shoegaze / dreampop trio from Sweden who release `Lillies` this month, the follow up to their debut album `Pink Noise`. `Lillies` tries to balance the emotions of sorrow and loneliness, with anger, frustration, and the determination to make a change for the better according to the band.
The album opens with `Fabrik` a fairly dreamy number with a constant electronic pulse running through its heart and some synth keys adding to the mix. The band have shared that the “song is about the fear of getting stuck in life, doing repetitive things, pleasing others and putting yourself second all the time. The song’s name, Fabrik, actually means Factory in Swedish. We wanted the sound of the synths and the drums to be reminiscent of some sort of big factory, a repetitive loop of big sounds that shaped a rhythm.” We have a much faster pace on `Selfcontrol` which, for me, had a touch of New Order about it and although it races along it becomes fairly hypnotic, especially when a steady dream beat added its power towards the latter part of this number .
`Dirty Dancing` seems to be about an unhealthy relationship which was once almost obsessive but now seems to be on the slide. Although it`s fairly ruminative, Matilda`s vocals give it a wonderful, unnerving edge. We return to a more blistering pace on `Coming Home` a powerful electronic soundscape where the lyrics hint at a relationship where one of the parties won`t open up emotionally which allows a fear to overtake the other.
Title track `Lilies` is quite enthralling and delightfully dreamlike. The Lilly flower represents purity, innocence and rebirth which may well explain the number`s etherealness. The addition of a tapped tambourine added a further poignancy, a simple instrument that for me is underutilised apart from in folk numbers. We have a much more electronic synth-pop offering on `Getting On Me` which has a pulsing driving beat.
`Awake` I read, is a song about the feeling of drifting apart from each other in a relationship. The feeling of being left behind and forgotten and how small of a person that makes you feel, hoping it’s all a bad dream and wishing to wake up again. It has a mid-paced electronic beat and vocals that float on top in a kind of detached manner. There`s a thumping drumbeat and bass line driving `Illness` along with swaying synths but it takes stock as it evolves and has a fairly reflective segment before returning to it`s mostly instrumental soundscape.
`Strangers` has a searing electronic beat with gentle vocals sprinkled atop which gives it a dreamlike ambience despite it`s speed. The album concludes with `Funeral` which has a throbbing beat at it`s core with vocals that drift in and out which gives it a fairly enthralling thoughtful texture.
The band have said that this album really carries the Echo Ladies mantra that ‘Nothing Ever Lasts’—good things can come to an end, but bad things will also pass, which does seem to be expressed throughout this release.
There was much to enjoy on `Lillies` which can be appreciated by analysing the lyrical content or by just sitting back and allowing the musical soundscape to envelope you for its forty-minute duration, either way it`s an album that will bestow a little pleasure into your life.
Rating 8.5 / 10
