Butterfly by Keeley Forsyth: Debris 2020

As an album, Debris is a wondrous, intense experience that is undeniably claustrophobic in parts, searching for an escape, yet redemptive in others, finding strength in its fragility. Forsyth herself stated that singing was a big part of her recovery process, physically and mentally, and the eight songs here bear fruit to that, as Forsyth’s voice itself is – thematically and musically – the beating heart of the album; simultaneously cavernous and vulnerable. Bringing to mind the lower ranges of Aldous Harding’s voice and Tilt-era Scott Walker (one can imagine her singing Farmer in the City perfectly), her haunting, tremulous voice ebbs and flows against the sparse instrumentation, deftly arranged by experimental composer Matthew Bourne and producer Sam Hobbs.