Laura Groves – ‘Yes’ EP review: Forcing you to remember everything you’d rather forget
Laura Groves must be a freak of nature. OK, admittedly, that may sound a little harsh, as she’s probably a perfectly nice person, but she must be the only person in the world who, five years on, is still languishing in the dystopian insularity of Covid-19 lockdown.
Yet it’s clear that over this period of half a decade since, the singer has been on a journey of grappling with this point in time, with her latest EP Yes from Bella Union finally representing the release back into the wild – or, at least, the streets of London – although things never quite looked the same again. As a self-produced project by Bradford-born musician, with five previous EPs and two albums already under her belt, it is evident that the creative outlet is all hers. The question is whether we really want it.
Certainly, if you’re after something that lands in the very precise sweet spot between shoegaze and electronica, with all the hazy reverb and wispy vocals you could ever want, this EP will be right up your street. But does the concept of re-entering society after lockdown, blazing through the city streets and facing previously repressed memories truly convey itself through this? Perhaps not so much.
On a general note, the basis of the record just seems far too vast to ever be fully encapsulated in just four tracks. Speaking from a purely personal perspective, being released from lockdown in 2021 was akin to freeing a crazed animal from a cage – having been deprived of nights out and every experience of youth so far, it’s fair to say we all went a bit feral. This won’t have been everyone’s experience, granted, but at least to my memory, it wasn’t a time summed up by moody introspection.
In their own respective capacities, the tracks are not at all of poor quality. They are each rich, textural, and deeply layered, with Groves’ talent as both the musician and producer evident by the bucketload. But something odd happens when they are put together, in which each song almost acts like a shackled weight on the other, and leaves you at the end feeling like you have the heaviness of an unknown forlornness pressing on your shoulders.
This only feels strange because it never seemed to be the intention, as an EP set to explore the freedom of a re-emerging world. It’s the sound of the ache in your chest as the only person in an empty nightclub, or the feeling of your stomach dropping as you walk along street after street without seeing another soul for the whole time. Lockdown may have felt like that, sure, but coming out of it really didn’t.
Indeed, Yes perhaps achieves something opposite to its original blueprint in that, after losing the best part of two years of our lives to the wrath of the pandemic, it almost makes you want to go back inside. We swore we’d never do it again, and in that sense, releasing a record reflecting on a moment that forces you to reflect on what now feels like a whole different lifetime is certainly a bold choice. The debate is whether it really pays off.
The ideal listening experience: When you have no plans on a Friday night and you’re forced to lie in a darkened room and consider all your life choices.
For fans of: Never letting go of any marginally traumatic memory that has ever happened to you.
A concluding comment from Boris Johnson: “You must stay at home.”
Release date: August 1st, 2025 | Producer: Laura Groves | Label: Bella Union
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