There is a particular kind of anger that stems not from being destroyed, but from someone trying to erase you. Kindred Spirits, the debut album by Lilith Left The Garden, lives right in that feeling. Lily Clarisa, an award-winning Aruban poet and the driving force behind the project, turned the fallout from a messy personal and creative triangle involving herself, her ex-partner, and the band’s former drummer into eight confessional post-punk tracks that sound like an open wound.
The album opens with the title track: urgent riffs, powerful drums, and a voice oscillating between confrontation and confession. The final question, “will you remember me this way?”, still sounds painfully unresolved. “Incompetent Sword” follows, angular and dark with clear echoes of Siouxsie and the Banshees, dissecting the cruelty hidden behind charm and performative incompetence. The third track, “Cigarettes After Sex”, moves into completely different territory: shoegaze haze and romantic tension building to a mid-song explosion that collapses in on itself, like a relationship trapped in the same cycle.
“A lot of women are expected to quietly disappear after a breakup or a band falling apart. I wasn’t interested in disappearing or leaving my own band after every other OG band member had left. I wanted to document every messy feeling that came with that experience.”
“Sertralineless Summers” is the album’s most exposed moment: built on darkwave repetitions and an almost mantric pulse, the song follows Lily as she tries to survive the mental chaos of reducing her antidepressant dose in the middle of summer. It’s genuinely unsettling in the best possible way. “Twisted Feeling” captures the paradox of missing someone you no longer want near you; its hypnotic bassline and spoken-word passages sit with the ambivalence rather than resolving it. “Grackle Grackle” provides a much-needed gear shift — Delta 5 energy, danceable and slightly unhinged — before “Drop Dead” closes the album in under a minute: exhaustion, repetition, and nothing left to say.
Lily’s background in spoken word poetry is audible throughout: these songs are as much to be read as heard, emotions channelled through noise. With obsessive repetitions, dark grooves, and raw feeling, Lilith Left The Garden have carved out a space that feels unmistakably their own.
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