At the age of 23, Fenne Lily is a recovering catastrophist. In the world of
her music, Fenne’s inveterate vulnerability transforms what-ifs into worse
case scenarios, hypotheticals into heartache. This heart-on-sleeve ethos
spawned her early songwriting and colored the emotional intensity of her
already confessional work. Now, she’s facing this tendency towards
emergency head on.
“Hypochondriac,” the Bristol singer’s debut single on Dead Oceans, reflects
on this struggle and her own role in solving it. “It’s the first in a collection of
tracks addressing myself as both the cause of and solution to my
anxieties.” Somewhere between the guitar-first catharsis of early Big Thief
and the urgent honesty of Sharon Van Etten, Fenne finds the track’s
footing.
Fenne’s new material represents a graduation of sorts from the
relationship-based themes of her breakout On Hold, and from the rooted
plaintiveness of her vocal delivery. She wants dynamism. She wants to be
heard. “It’s time for me to be loud if I wanna be loud and not feel like I’m
gonna piss anyone off,” Fenne offers up. Though, it’s not an abandonment
of these traits she’s known for but a deliberate construction upon them.
Fenne says these songs are simply “a more grown up way of being all the
things I have always been and always will be.”