Katie Gregson-MacLeod - Love Me Too Well, I’ll Retire Early

Katie Gregson-MacLeod has been stumbling through a fog of uncertainty since parting ways with her major label last year, following the success of early viral singles ‘complex’ and ‘Teenage Love’. Here, she’s balled up the messy haze of it all and knit five fresh tracks from the experience, each one like a diary excerpt laid out in carefully contemplative, tender poetry. This collection of letters, as Katie puts it, ditches the heavy piano ballads in favour of an intimate splay of strings, often nudging her along like soft waves beneath a sailboat. Her heart-on-sleeve lyrics are particularly poignant on ‘Chess’ and the title track, where she croons about the quiet joy a new relationship brought into her life amid the chaos of both her career and the outside world. It seems that Katie is prodding at a new sound - something that’s warm and poetic, with enough weight to brand her a talented storyteller - and she need only have the confidence to follow it through.