In any creative field, the sooner you get started, the further you can go. At least, that’s the principle which Halifax indie trio the Orielles seem to be working from. Bassist Esmé Hand-Halford and guitarist Henry Wade were teenagers when the band’s joyful debut album Silver Dollar Moment lit up the British music scene like a spinning suncatcher in 2018.
After moving through eclectic funk (2020’s Disco Volador) and outright sound-art experimentation (2022’s Tableau), they’ve landed on Only You Left, an album which reactivates the indie instincts of their debut while building on their increasingly adventurous streak. “These things come in like seven year cycles,’ says Wade. ‘So we’ve come in like a full circle back to a familiar place, just as different people.”
And yet, on opener ‘Three Halves’, there’s not a trace of the feelgood jangle pop that Silver Dollar Moment brimmed over with. The subtle siren of Wade’s post-punky guitar work yelps up and down before dropping back to a murkier atmosphere which murmurs restlessly like a city at night, the instruments flickering through the darkness with exploratory indecision.
With the first two Orielles records proving that the band know their way around a hook (and then some), their recent venture into more abstract territory recalls experimental-pop geniuses such as Mark Hollis and Arthur Russell. But where Hollis and Russell’s tenor voices were heavy with monumental, world-halting sadness, Hand-Halford’s faintly transatlantic tones are as clean and detached as they’ve always been.
Still, throughout Only You Left, the remote and reserved settings of these songs allow new textures and emotional notes to surface within her voice. It takes on a subtle intimacy on ‘Embers’, which lies somewhere between Bristolian trip hop and James Blake’s singular take on R&B while folky guitar and percussion skitter over the top, lending it the frail, fleeting warmth the title indicates.
Wade’s accompanying baritone, surfacing now and then to join in on harmonies, adds further humanity to the Orielles’ experiments, and it slots perfectly into ‘Whenever (I May Not Feel So Close)’. It’s one of the most beautiful songs the band have ever written, a gently dancing web of guitar setting the scene for whispered vocals which reassure rather than intrude. After the other instruments fall away, even the lilt of the bass seems weighted with wisdom.
This ambivalent relationship with emotion is a purposeful decision. Drummer Sidonie Hand-Halford says, “We maybe wanted to subconsciously disguise this album as something that felt more light and easy on the ears. But it’s much more melancholic. It’s not a deeply sad album. It’s just leaning into the beauty of sadness a little bit.”
Just as Only You Left can surprise you with sudden wells of feeling, it can also take expected moments of sorrow and stand at a remove from them. “You could think of something deeply human,’ says Esmé of the third track’s title, ‘Tears Are’. ‘But you could also answer it in a completely linguistic sense and think of a tear as a symbol or an image.“
For the Orielles, this academic approach is second-nature. Even on their danceable debut, they forwent love songs and introspection for odes to Yorgos Lanthimos films and beer bottle design. Then, on follow-up Disco Volador, they slipped words like ‘panopticism’ and ‘sensorium’ between even bouncier, catchier grooves. But on ‘Tears Are’, a sharp-edged pop artefact reminiscent of studious art-punks Wire, the backing switches abruptly between heavy bass and lighter guitar riffing as Esmé repeats the two-word refrain – ‘sympathetic shapes’. It seems the band’s lyrics, set to this music, have finally found a sympathetic shape of their own.
‘Wasp’ is even more angular. Like so many of these tracks, it comes across more as a fragmented collage than a straightforwardly structured song. With its zigzagging guitar, bobbing bass, electronic handclap noises, and church bells, to listen to it is to feel as though you are running through a maze, dodging in and out of the nearest entrances and exits you can find.
Only You Left was recorded both in Hamburg and on the Greek island of Hydra, and Wade explains in regards to each song, ‘We were picturing recording it in this cold, clinical space in Hamburg or this laid back, bohemian, church-esque space in Greece. And then that just completely influenced how we played and how they were written’. Or as Esmé puts it, “We had this vague imagery of wood versus metal. Hamburg was metal and Hydra was wood. Everything fell naturally into either category.”
While it’s impossible to know for sure which tracks were recorded where, some of these songs certainly have a warmer, more pastoral atmosphere than others. The band are closest to their former selves on the light and funky second half of ‘Tiny Beads Reflecting Light’, with shades of Gruff Rhys in Wade’s vocals. This leads into the lovely, measured folk rock of ‘The Woodland Has Returned’, its hopeful lyrics given life by a cohesive, verdant, and perfectly balanced ecosystem of strings, percussion, piano, bass, and guitar.
But gentleness does not necessarily beget comfort, as ‘You are Eating a Part of Yourself’ shows. Beginning with the kind of crepuscular, reverberating guitar chords which Vini Reilly uses to such beautiful effect on the Durutti Column’s classic work, the song builds into a hazy mesh of sound before fading to leave only piano and Esmé’s vocals. “You’re choosing a side you don’t really like,” she whispers, bringing cognitive dissonance and false binarism into a light where they can no longer be ignored.
And the album’s more conventional rockers manage to veer into unexpected places, too. The guitar-led ‘Shadow of You Appears’ is cleanly produced and sharply melodic, bringing to mind the monochrome angst of Comsat Angels, early U2, and especially Joy Division, but the throbbing pizzicato strings that rise up from nowhere to overtake the song would surprise even Martin Hannett. Similarly, ‘All in Metal’ boasts a slyly sliding string interlude which sweetens and complicates its loud-quiet dynamics while idiosyncratically jazzy rhythms tick away underneath.
Closing track ‘To Undo the World Itself’ works overtime to draw out the angelic Elizabeth Fraser-ish qualities of Esmé’s voice, backed as it is by a wash of ringing post-rock guitar which grows and grows until it finally collapses again, leaving those last few notes to hang in the air. Eight years on from Silver Dollar Moment, the Orielles sound as if they’ve lived a lifetime while losing none of the curiosity of youth. Could any artist ask for more?
Only You Left is out Friday 13th March via Heavenly Recordings – order here
The Orielles are currently on tour – buy tickets here:
March 13th – Piccadilly, Manchester
March 14th – Jumbo, Leeds
March 15th – Bear Tree, Sheffield
March 16th – Jacaranda, Liverpool
March 17th – Rough Trade, Bristol
March 18th – Resident, Brighton
March 19th – Rough Trade East, London
The Orielles socials:
Facebook | Instagram | Bandcamp
Review by Poppy Bristow
Photography by Neelam Khan Vela
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