Let’s begin with my apology for tardiness. I have been enjoying this album for about a week when I should have been writing about it, trying to find ways to extol its many virtues without resorting to cliched superlatives. However I keep coming back to the fact that Essex-born, Manchester-based Chloe Hawes is responsible for a new album that is about as terrific as terrific can ever get.
Chloe’s been making music for a few years now and has released several digital/download only EPs, the first one Sessions From Home coming as far back as December 2014. I’ve listened to all of them in the course of getting to know more about Chloe, and have subsequently spent a lot of time kicking myself for not getting to know Chloe earlier. Remains/Reminders is Chloe’s first full album and first work to be released on your actual vinyl, too.
Without intending to be even slightly disparaging to what went before, it is as confident and assured a ‘proper debut’ as you’ll hear in 2024, and possibly ever.
Remains/Reminders contains nine songs, most of them clocking in at not much more than 2 ½ minutes and not one going over the four minute mark. The phrase ‘all killer, no filler’ might well be overused but it certainly applies here. Chloe’s personal, sometimes introverted and often Sapphic lyrics are made all the more accessible by the ear-friendly nature of the melodies, which are up there with your ARXXes, your Paramores and others of similarly high calibre. Producer Steve Millar has framed Chloe’s beguiling husk (which brings to mind, ever so slightly, the singing voice of the formerly-Catatonic Cerys Matthews) with a solid web of sound that does it full justice, even if Chloe’s idiosyncratic and unique delivery does sometimes get tangled and lost in said web. The quality of the songs can truly be fully appreciated with a lyric sheet. I don’t know if the vinyl album comes with one, but the lyrics can be found in full on Bandcamp – and I do recommend that you read and listen simultaneously.
It’s not easy to pick one or two highlights when all nine tracks are deserving of that accolade, but personal favourites include ‘Fugazi’ – a heads-down, no-nonsense boogie that would not sound out of place on a Status Quo album in many ways and a celebration of a one night sexual congress that gets straight to the point
“We can f*ck to Fugazi if you want to,
Or lay quiet as the songs play on in the dark –
I just wanna be near you…”
and the sublime, up-tempo “Bookends” which nails its colours firmly to a self-explanatory mast over an inordinately catchy tune that would sit well on any radio playlist of the last 30 years or so
“me and my friends,
just coz we don’t fit in the space
between your binary bookends,
that’s alright…”
There are plenty more highlights where these come from too, including a collaboration with the equally excellent Katie Malco on the anti-love song ‘First To Leave’:
“I am begging you to stay
so I can be the first to leave…”
and the aftermath of fleeting sexual congress in ‘Forgotten Lips’:
“I spent my last 50 quid on Jager shots with strangers,
heard about these nights, never thought I’d be a victim to them…”
– but really I am being disingenuous to the other tracks by singling out just these four. My advice is that you hop over to the aforementioned Bandcamp and listen to/purchase a copy of Remains/Reminders. In doing so, you will have invested in what I already know will be one of 2024’s best albums. And you will have witnessed the emergence of someone who I am sure will come to be regarded as a major talent by the masses in no time at all. And who you will have very likely heard about and heard first via LOUD WOMEN.
Remains/Reminders is available now on UTB Records (UK)/Nasty Cut Records (EU)/Mt. Crushmore Records (US). There will be some big gig news soon…
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