Flyte – ‘Between You and Me’ album review: The soft place where love and malaise meet
An intimate room warmed only by a nightlamp. A friend leaning over in a nightclub to gossip in your ear. A work colleague whose secrets spill out like a long-term comrade. A partner opening their heart up to you, not for the first time. A broken secret between two exes. “Between you and me,” they’ll say. Like it’s just for you – and in that moment, it is.
These are all the sorts of intimate feelings you immediately get listening to Between You and Me. Like it’s entirely for you, before you’re even able to put a name to the feelings themselves. The record itself feels like falling in love. But it also feels like already being deep in the depths of it. And also like coming out of the other side, broken and empty, trying to figure out where it went wrong. Or maybe it’s just numb.
But while there’s an inherent headiness to such a claim, Flyte coast across these elements with a folkish charm, an almost casual smoothness that lacks bite even when the themes are pain and hurt. This vulnerability comes through straight away with ‘Hurt People’, a timeless arrangement that could just as easily come from the 1960s, in which the words themselves linger somewhere between despair and acceptance.
From there, we get a sense that these cadences of suffering are best recognised against the love they spawned from, like in ‘Alabaster’, where Aimee Mann’s vocal gorgeously harmonises against the backdrop of a disastrous love that they can’t help but fall head-first into. “I know it’s the wrong way to want you, but we’re already here,” especially is a line that stays with you, one we’ve all felt at one point or another, where you’re essentially like I don’t know what we’re doing here, but it’s too late to stop now.
While these warm desires carry through the golden sunsets of LA through ‘Emily and Me’, these hues become a bit more ambiguous and solemn on ‘I’m So Down’ and ‘Hello Sunshine’. Here, it’s not so much about trying to figure things out as it’s about realising exactly where you are and how to let the waves guide you in the moment, even if it’s not always the right direction. But even still, as we coast through different variations of the same kind of convoluted realisations, it’s precisely there that the purpose of the record comes to the shore.
By the time we reach ‘Everybody Says I Love You’, we’re reminded that the constant process of learning and realisation is where beauty comes from. We might not be able to immediately capture thoughts, memories or feelings. But as we’re figuring out, soon enough, it’s the way things reveal themselves to us that matters the most. Sometimes it’s the malaise and uncertainty that bring out the most honest art, which is exactly the point this record brings us to.
It’s inherently hard to capture that kind of uncertainty, especially when it’s unclear where, exactly, these thoughts are coming from. But it’s also Flyte’s choice of words that make it feel both confessional and resigned, in a way that feels entirely yours, as the listener. Like the way someone might lean over in a crowded room and utter, “between you and me…” – it’s yours because it feels like it’s yours, and no one else’s. And it’s also yours because it’s yours to figure out along the way.
Standout track: ‘Alabaster’ – There are several contenders for this record’s standout track, but something about ‘Alabaster’ pulls you back more than the rest, probably something to do with how Mann’s voice complements the broader feeling of impending doom in the shape of true love.
For fans of: That addictive feeling of being stuck in your own head.
A concluding lyric to summarise it all: “Babe, give me your worst / I’m so down / Nothing about this hurts.”
Release date: August 29th, 2025 | Producer: Ethan Johns | Label: Nettwerk
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out New Music Newsletter
All the latest New Music from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.