Sad girl indie meets garden filled dream escape
Just in time for Spring, visit the hypnotic and enthralling manifestation of 21 year old London based artist Ella Smoker’s, aka. gglum, troubled and nightmare filled subconscious: The Garden Dream. This album breaks boundaries of sad girl indie with a refreshing and exciting dreamscape. However, unlike most troubled minds and nightmares, gglums hypnotic garden is filled with enthralling soft acoustics, introspective airy vocals and fun upbeat electric guitars that bring head bobbing indie rock to full throttle. Indeed most tracks display their own distinct sound, somewhere between experimental folk and Smoker’s own introspective journey with sound and musical technique.
Beginning with the first track “With You,” this song reveals a recurring theme throughout the album: a longing acoustic guitar, melodic bass and poignant lyrics describing a broken relationship. “With me” encompasses intriguing lines like “All the times, I think you ignore me / Oh, it piles up under the laundry” that lead into the crash of drums of a very deep but catchy chorus. The chorus itself entrances with its harmonizing backtrack vocals and accompaniment that builds an unforgettable sound and atmosphere. This heightened state appears, vanishes and reappears as the artist goes through the throes of the relationship and the album itself.
The first track sets up a clear indie acoustic tone of gglums garden, only to be intercepted by the second tracks’ rock bass lines and heavy drums. “Splat” makes headway with a more upbeat sound and almost danceable melody. This change ultimately describes the diversity and excellence of this album. Rock songs like “Splat” and “Easy fun” are varied and peppered throughout the album, with hints within individual songs themselves. This brings in a complete change of pace and authenticity. While electric, the tone feels surprising as well as homely, a purely cohesive mix of emotional turbulence and acceptance that decorates this album in dashing fashion.
What lies truly unforgettable is the experimental sound of tracks “Pruning 1” and “Pruning 2.” “Pruning 1” begins with discorded ambient sounds that lead into a surprising synth melody. The voice is now modded, spouting terse and repetitive phrases throughout the intense and cinematic atmosphere. Ultimately, the drowned out vocal lines drag the viewer into “Pruning 2,” a beautiful acoustic melody dawning on a poetic lyrical stream of consciousness, cascading into a final melodic end that feels like a soft patch of summer greenery.
The album finishes neatly with “The Garden Dream,” an incredibly powerful song encompassing all that there is to love about the album as a whole: varied melodies of acoustic to electric instruments, cinematic vocal harmony and daring ambient background tracks with random recordings that build and release into a gratifying and personal experience. Overall, the album delivers an exciting and groundbreaking exploration into indie sound and variation. Its effective skill leads the audience into not only what appears to be a new world of tune, but an exciting examination of the imaginative process of gglums artistry.
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