Alice Phoebe Lou’s Full Circle Glow

Photographer: Andrea Ariel

In a musical landscape saturated with noise, Alice Phoebe Lou’s clarity and softness break through in a unique way. Her songwriting covers a variety of emotional themes, from relationships to life under patriarchy to her own sense of smallness in the universe. Beyond that, she’s nearly impossible to categorize. Moving between jazz, indie, blues, and singer-songwriter styles, her music feels like an ever-evolving conversation.

In her song “Skin Crawl” from her 2019 album Paper Castles, the line “I’m gonna put it in the backyard / I’m already lit” serves as a powerful metaphor for patriarchal exhaustion, suggesting that the confined space men have imposed on women is not only suffocating but also self-destructive and already burning from within. She repeats this line, building the momentum of what feels like a release and a confrontation.

Lou recently released an album titled Oblivion on Oct. 24, and she released a total of five singles leading up to it. A clear theme was emerging. The sound is more stripped back than much of her previous work. “Old Shadows” feels like a story set in the present but haunted by the past. She mourns the parts of herself she gave away to failed relationships while facing something new and unfamiliar — something loving. Her voice, paired with the soft piano as she sings “when I come with daggers out / I’m fighting old battles,” captures the fragile, reflective emotion of that moment perfectly. 

Lou grew up in South Africa and has spoken about how complex that experience was. She looks back fondly on the country’s beauty while also recognizing the deep inequalities that shaped it. Since so much of her songwriting explores themes of identity, I’m especially interested in how her move from South Africa to Germany has influenced her perspective.

Lou has always been creative and first began performing as a fire dancer. She later busked on the streets, which ultimately helped fund her musical career. I get a strong sense of how all of this transition and life experience translates into her work. Everything about her artistry, from the music to the visuals, carries a theme of psychedelic honesty.

Lou’s first release, Orbit (2016), was nothing but impressive. The album is stripped back and intimate, making her new record feel like a full circle moment. I love playing Orbit while lying in my room, letting it drift peacefully in the background. Then in 2019 she released Paper Castles, where she began to fully form her warm, expansive sound.

In 2021, she released two albums, Glow and Child’s Play, an unexpected but welcome surprise. Glow leaned into Lou’s indie-pop side, continuing her exploration of love and loss with a sound that feels warm and old-timey. Child’s Play solidified her ability to use vivid, earthy imagery. In the song “Underworld,” she uses the roots of trees as a metaphor for the secret language shared between people who love each other.

Lou approached this release as an established storyteller with nothing left to prove. It’s never forced or pushy, just evidence of a natural progression and a beautiful trail of what has unfolded for her over time.