Alice Phoebe Lou shares 6th album ‘Oblivion’
The South African singer-songwriter embraces the simplicities of her craft to produce her most honest and intimate record yet.
Photo: Lexi Hide
Making music in 2025 can feel like shouting into the void, and the sheer volume of music being released can smother and suffocate an artist into submission. The fear of having their creative dream unheard can often scare artists straight into arbitrarily attaching all the bells and whistles music production can offer to their project, purely to cut through the noise. No, you do not need a cowbell solo in your hyper-pop anthem, nor do you need a string quartet to diversify your grime track. This collective mania continues to metastasise, swallowing more and more artists into its growing hive-mind. Will it one day consume them all? Enter Alice Phoebe Lou.
Originating from South Africa, singer-songwriter Alice Phoebe Lou is a scrapbook filled with earthly tales of exploration and cultivation. Grounding herself in her surroundings, Lou has busked around the world, forming an intimate relationship with her craft like very few can.
The now Berlin-based artist’s sound is delicate yet filled with passion, specialising in soft and simple musicianship. This allows the spotlight to shine on her stunning words, which give meaningful and tangible form to the deepest feelings that often evade definition. After receiving critical acclaim for her previous works, notably Shelter and Glow, Lou returns to self-produce and self-release yet another full-length project, Oblivion.
Oblivion is emaciated, starved of any redundant fill that could detract from the storytelling. Throughout, Lou regales listeners with fine instrumentation of only mere keys or strings, without even as much as a drumbeat insight across the eleven tracks. This is, of course, in unison with her heavenly voice, familiar yet never overstated. This gorgeous blend litters an intimacy throughout the album, often giving the feeling of sharing in the company of Lou, as if her ballads were moulded to fit in the palm of the listener’s hands.
The production for the album is credited to Alice herself, obsessing over these tracks with a self-assured twang that makes them the quintessential representation of her art. The sonic result is a tranquil journey into Lou’s psyche, wholly in the absence of the pressures of external voices. This quiet isolation of artistry allows Lou to grapple with her inner self, and it feels as though her tame instrumentation merely offers a platform for her to submit her thoughts to. She isn’t trying to create something as much as she is trying to discover inner truths.
There’s a litany of lyrical instances that crawl into listeners’ brains that encapsulate this. The opening track, Sailor, which welcomes us into this wondrous world, is unapologetically honest: “I’m usually hopeless in love”, whilst its successor, Pretender, exhibits Lou’s first foray into bittersweet inner reflection, “How sweet it could be if I could love myself / Even when I wanna be someone else”.
Following Mind Reader, another deep-seated campfire sonnet that feels illogically close, Lou scales back her already admittedly scaled back production for Sparkle, a deeply intimate ballad composed of just a glimmering vocal track, fluttering piano keys and a natural musical charm.
Inevitably, Oblivion soon arrives. The title track is without a shadow of a doubt the pinnacle of the project. The track is rooted in its sombre nature, the piano riff is repeating and spiralling, its minor key gloomy and apocalyptic. Lou’s voice is flanked by a male backing which, when paired with the atmospheric booms, anchor the song as something weightier and true.
Similarly, You and I and Old Shadows find Alice Phoebe Lou at her very best. The former is a slow-dance completed with gentle guitar strums and heartfelt lyricism, the musical equivalent of a hazy Sunday morning sunrise spent with a significant other. The latter shines the spotlight on an ethereal voice with the rare emergence of a coarse falsetto. A true earthly beauty, heart-shattering and raw. Lou credits this authentic rawness to a want for maintaining the sanctity of the creative process, embracing the imperfections to deliver a newfound genuineness in her sound.
The album reaches its end with With or Without. Brutally straightforward as the only lyrics are those of its title repeating, the full force of Lou’s passion is filtered through an array of blaring vocal sirens. By the project’s closing notes, Lou’s guitar strums have become pounds, making for an emotionally and sonically satisfying conclusion.
Oblivion always feels spacious yet never empty. The absence of drumming and pacier numbers is filled by a palpable passion Alice Phoebe Lou exhibits for her music. This can at times leave the listener’s experience somewhat barren, but, more importantly, it wholly grounds this project in Lou’s artistic vision.
Oblivion returns Lou to her busking roots and intimately brings the listener along for the journey, as if they were sitting at her heels as she performed once more on the streets of Berlin. It’s Cohen-Mitchell-esque. It’s heartfelt, sun-kissed and a true love-letter to perfecting the simplicities of song-writing. It’s exactly what Alice Phoebe Lou does best.
Oblivion is out now.