Fenne Lily for Win Win. Photo by Sage Szkabarnicki-Stuart.
Regardless of release date, Fenne Lily’s music has always lived in a timeless realm only the universally sincerest of lyrics and strikingly simplest of arrangements can belong to. Her breakout, 2018’s independently-released On Hold, is an acoustic compilation of teenage confessionals; 2020’s BREACH finds Lily battling early adulthood demons to the tune of an expanded sonic palette post-signing to Dead Oceans; and in 2023’s Big Picture, she takes a step back and examines humane phenomena with an overall lighter air.
Now, in her latest project Win Win, the English folk star revisits the all-too-familiar theme of heartbreak from a place of clarity. Over pedal steel serenades and unhurried drumbeats, Lily unravels the psychology of a breakup in order to flex her personal growth, and the result is her most gorgeous songwriting yet.
A move from Bristol to New York City is the backdrop for Win Win, and the scene is set by opening track “Uh Huh,” which describes the realization that distance does not, in fact, make the heart grow fonder: “Couldn’t breathe and couldn’t sleep / And you could’ve swore you lost it all / But it all turned out to be just one year-long long-distance call.” Yet amid narrative moroseness, Lily drops keen lyrical bombs like, “Love should be described more as a climb than as a fall.” These moments where her pen digs deeper into the parchment are abundant in Win Win, and are what keep the album from being tired and lovelorn, instead turning the record into an exercise in habit-changing introspection.
We see this sort of backwards in “Waterslide,” where Lily returns to a time when serious contemplation over ending the relationship kicks in. Here she lets metaphors take the lead in scene-setting — “Hanging out the roof to drive / Head and arms, waterslide” — and speaks plainly to deliver the hard truths: “‘Got a lot of time, I guess’ / Is something you might say / When I don’t wanna keep you / And you don’t wanna stay.” The track’s instrumental opening, too, plays with ideas of hard-to-grasp fantasy versus steady reality. “Waterslide” starts with bright, syncopated finger-picking whose rhythm makes it hard to pin a time signature down, until a vocal count-in and steady drum beat ground the soundscape.
Watch the music video for “Stranger Things” on YouTube.
Lily’s theme of groundedness makes itself known both lyrically and sonically, but especially vocally. The 29-year-old artist lives in her lower register for much of the record, which helps drive her points home. Her resonant alto shines as she sings, “There are two ways of letting go,” on “Two Ways,” and throughout the whole of “Waterslide.” Conversely, her sunny tone on “Stranger Things” makes hope-twinged lyrics like, “There must be stranger things than finding you / I just haven’t found them yet,” all the more clear.
Singles “Sleeping” and “Thank You Sorry” are perhaps the most telling not only of Lily’s craft, but also of her character. These are the tracks where her anger seeps through — where her voice becomes boomier and electric guitars are present — but her commitment for warmth wins in the end. In “Sleeping,” petty questions of “Do you leave the light on? Do you leave the car running? Do you live the way you did before?” get traded in the final chorus for a sort of hands-off resolve: “So go leave the light on…” In “Thank You Sorry,” the lyrics, I don’t hate you / I never had the heart to,” are emphasized by the electric guitar strumming the same melody, before a lighter instrumentation supports her as she continues, “When all you wanted to be was part of a whole / And all you wanted from me was not to feel nothing at all.” This sonic shift basically says, “If you take one thing away from this song, it’s that I don’t hate you,” while also delivering necessary gut punches with sensitivity.
At a certain point, just when the blade that is Fenne Lily’s emotional intelligence may seem dull from constant use, she reminds listeners in closer “in Life and on Planes” that the simplest of feelings are the ones worth holding onto, with the repetition of, “I don’t belong to other people now.”