Ascending the regular slot of slow-paced pieces of moving music, Holly Humberstone’s latest track, Can You Afford to Lose Me? strikes through with remarkable quality. Relative simplicity in its title is a red herring to the depth and scope presented in this latest release. An emotive starting point for Humberstone’s next steps draws a line under the relationship at the core of this track. Turning that relatively simple question into a crux for a commentary on how distant and lonely isolation can feel, Can You Afford to Lose Me? and its quality cannot be overstated. A sincere and telling track that showcases how a stripped-back and simplified indie track can cut through just as well as those heavily layered pieces boasting technical merit.
If anything, Can You Afford to Lose Me? is a clear case of reflection. For such a young artist, it strikes as a well-lived experience that still holds surreal power over Humberstone’s lyrical defiance. It is another supreme, quality track ahead of the long-awaited debut. There are moments within that feel touching and emotionally stirring, similar to the effect and beautifully structured pieces of The Dying Light from Sam Fender last year. Understanding the guiding hands of Humberstone’s technical qualities is to understand how a simplified route can often be the best approach for a musician. Can You Afford to Lose Me? is impressive not just in its quality but in its restraint also.
Keeping Humberstone’s music truly unique though is that synthesizer and pop-oriented spectrum. Simple lyrical rhythm does so much when it is explored so fluidly, as it is here on Can You Afford to Lose Me?. Tremendous to say the least, it is a track with that usually emotive and raw quality that can be expected of artists working in the indie field, but Humberstone crashes through with the uniqueness needed to stand out. Intense quality can often be found in the simplicity put forward by a theme or context. Humberstone’s track of losing the fire and proving worth is as complex as the layered technical organisation on show throughout. Rob Milton’s synthesizer work cannot go unpraised.
Saying that an artist is “destined for greatness” is such a cop-out, but there really is no other way of describing the meteoric rise of Humberstone. Her work is astonishingly well-formed and interspersed with meaningful commentaries on topics and moods that a listener can engage with. There is a powerful understanding of just how strong and exceptional a voice Humberstone holds, and hearing that is as striking as it is enjoyable. Her other tracks have offered similar thematics and tones, but Can You Afford to Lose Me? poses its tough and tense rhetorical with great pride at the heart of it all. Explicit, angry and tense atmospherics pour through Humberstone’s track with such clarity and unique intensity. There are few tracks like it, a piece that holds its own thanks to lyrical impressions that are both strong enough to stand out but familiar enough to engage the broader audience.
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