Discover the tender sounds of Liverpool songwriter Lydia Rowlands!

Lydia Rowlands is a singer-songwriter trading in muted ballads that incorporate elements of Alt-Pop, Chamber music and Country into a wintry blend as naked as the season’s bare trees. Their new song ‘The Names That They Gave Us’ had been circulating in their mind for a while now, being a re-recording of a demo from 2020: the juxtaposition between the more mature person they are now, and the self-deprecating person resonating through the lyrics posing an intriguing contrast that only accentuates the emotional turmoil within.

Nestled on a bed of tender strings, plangent acoustic guitar and weaving piano, the lyrics lament a doomed romance where the narrator outlines their crippling self-doubts and guilt over its end. Incisively, the theme of contrasts returns again, as Rowlands articulates the ease at which nostalgic memories can be poisoned by a split (“and all of these nights that they gave us / carve deep like the way they betrayed us”).

The sympathetic strain of the surrounding instrumentation only further plunges the knife deeper, their pillowy swells stressing Lydia’s conflict runs deep internally as well as externally. It’s a remarkable step, one that gives them a firm foundation for continued nuanced works in the coming months.