Alice Phoebe Lou - 'Galaxies'

South African born Berliner Alice Phoebe Lou invites you on a journey through time and space with latest offering ‘Galaxies’. Written on her bedroom floor on a gloomy Berlin day, the song truly took shape over multiple performances at the city’s Planetarium.

Her vocals swoop like starlings across a winter sky, flitting between delicate tones and yelps of joy as she explores the Milky Way. Hints of her chosen home city’s burgeoning nu-soul scene emerge in the jazz inflected melodies and guitar grooves.  The meditative synths and echoing guitar rise and fall to craft an escapist, transportative atmosphere, as if Lou and her band are lifting you into space by your ears.

There’s a hint of melancholy to ‘Galaxies’  yet also an indisputable playfulness and joy, a contrast nicely summarised by the song’s closing lines. “A speck of dust in the Milky Way / We’ll fade away, slip away, come away, be away stay away” she intones, but just as you think that’s the end she concludes with the rather more hopeful “But we are alive today / We’ll be okay”.

The accompanying visuals, directed by Lou’s friends Chloë Lewer and Andrea Ariel and featuring animation by Hagen Schönfeld, find the singer in the role of a fallen star who dreams of their former life frolicking in the celestial plane. She awakens to a sunset and to the realisation that life on Earth is no less rich and meaningful.

Words by Hattie Long

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