I've written about Chloe Lorentzen a few times now, including a couple of live reviews and a brief piece on Sorry, a single released earlier in 2021.
I thought it was about time I shared some more thoughts. This is partly because Chloe's profile has been raised in the last few days with a slightly rainy appearance at Knipfest in Grantham, a gig at the Met Lounge in support of Ren Harvieu (which I sadly had to miss), and a lovely open-air double set at the bandstand in Stamford yesterday. But it's mainly in response to finally hearing Somebody's Someone in its full glory today.
Since Sorry came out, Chloe has kept to her ambitious plan of releasing a song per month this year. I'm amazed that she is able to come up with such high quality material, month after month. I'm also struck by how each song demonstrates an evolution of some kind.
This time, you can feel an added depth to the music. It's quite a slow burner, which is a song style which seems to work particularly well for Chloe: lots of drama, lots of emotion, and a very effective slightly dark undercurrent. There's also more production and instrumentation on this one which perhaps demonstrates added confidence.
The song doesn't have a crescendo in its own right, but instead Chloe's voice does the work. This culminates in a point near the end of the track when she absolutely lets go with a long, sustained visceral note. This then fades away until it's lost in a swirl of reverbed guitar and more layered vocals. Sung live, this is compelling and is guaranteed to draw in the audience.
There's a certain and quite rare skill in being able to write a song which works equally well live and recorded, and yet which contains elements which can feature in slightly different ways in those settings. When I heard Somebody's Someone premiered at the Met Lounge a couple of months ago, Chloe focused on a particular section ("me, me") and turned it into a sing-along. In the recording, that section is less obvious, and sung more subtly and breathily, but still works very well as a mood-setting underlay. That kind of versatility is striking.
With this release Chloe has added further to her catalogue, and it's easy to see how powerful her planned LP will be when we finally get to hear it all as a package, later this year.