Holly Macve - Time Is Forever

While ‘Beauty Queen’ does, admittedly veer closer to her sound than any previous releases, it’s easy to hear from mere seconds of this EP why Holly Macve has found a new friend in Lana Del Rey. They share a similar brand of nostalgic wistfulness, taking well-worn styles from pop decades past and twisting them around narratives no longer unspoken. In Holly’s case, the lush-sounding opener plunges right into its thematic darkness: “I was just eighteen / Days ago I was a child / It was his birthday / 45 years round the sun”. Lana herself pops up on ‘Suburban House’, a sort of flip-side to her own American dreaming, the pair’s voices intertwining hypnotically. It’s the solo ‘1995’ that’s the standout here, though: a ballad in the traditional sense, a driving song in the literal, and with such lines as “Don’t know if it’s the weather or fluoxetine / But lately I’ve been able to remember my dreams” perfectly avoiding becoming pastiche along the way.