Where I Should Be, alt rock outfit Red Vanilla’s second EP, is the latest release from a band that are fiercely making a name for themselves. Having recently signed to Placebo’s management company and featured on BBC Music Introducing, their newest offering is a sign of great things to come. Building on the success of their impressive debut EP, Days of Grey, they are back with their signature searing sound, nostalgic 90s riffs, and razor sharp lyrics.
‘Electric Blue’ opens the album with deceptive dreaminess, a hazy moment of contemplation with shoegaze flavours, before launching into a darker, more familiar mood with singer Anna Forsyth’s refrain of, ‘I know it gets better, I hope it gets better.’ ‘Hazy’ and ‘Ask Her If She’s Happy’ are bold and nostalgic, reminiscent of Paramore in their early emo years but with more alt rock grit and a bittersweet sense of vulnerability.
‘Play Me Something New’ makes for a surprising moment of tenderness in an overall punchy line-up, a dreamy, sentimental track that asks ‘would it kill you to say something kind?’ The stripped-back, melancholic ‘Sunkissed Pools’ is similarly moving.
There’s something more refined, yet still slightly unpolished, about their sound that adds to its rawness and realism; this album is honest and ambivalent and each track packs a real punch. On ‘I Thought I Had It,’ Forsyth speaks to the fear of failure and disappointment that comes with trying to make it in the music industry. Citing Queens of the Stone Age‘s Songs for the Deaf as influence, it simmers with an impatience and frustration that so many artists can relate to.
The album ends on high with their 2025 single ‘Oh No, I Got Older,’ a bittersweet and achingly relatable meditation on the contradictory experience of time passing while fearing you’re being left behind. “I have such a fear of time passing too, and worrying that we won’t get where we want to be with Red Vanilla before it’s too late,” laments Forsyth. ‘Oh No, I Got Older,’ she says, encompasses both that fear and the ambition and belief that they’ll get there. A bold, familiarly alt rock track with all the ferocity of a cathartic, coming-of-age anthem, Forsyth proclaims, ‘I’m not giving up on hope anymore.’ And if this this album is anything to go by, that hope and hard work is paying off.
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