Lili Holland-Fricke and Sean Rogan – ‘Dear Alien’ album review: delicious, unending patterns
THE SKINNY: Lili Holland-Fricke does things her own way. A cellist from the Royal Northern College of Music, Holland-Fricke was the first student to take on the pop songwriting course with an instrument that wasn’t vocals or a guitar. She also got signed to Manchester-based Melodic after sending the label an email, to which they responded, marking the first time they truly paid attention to a cold pitch.
Holland-Fricke does things her own way by veering through college and the music industry with a knack for experimentalism and a confidence that comes from pushing boundaries in both her studies and her music. Extending beyond the realm of pop, Holland-Fricke blends classical and electronics with an unconventional approach to the cello while balancing meticulously placed melodic charm.
Dear Alien sees Holland-Fricke and fellow college student, guitarist, and producer Sean Rogan converge. They navigate intimate and striking concoctions of sounds, resulting in an eight-track-long dreamlike, suspended atmosphere. The distortions dance around concepts of discomfort while playing with structural expectations before landing nowhere in a powerful move to instate the importance of relinquishing expectation.
Many aspects feel unsettling, dangerous, and even hazy, keeping everything intact even when multiple components play alongside each other. Above all, Holland-Fricke and Rogan prove to be masters at entertaining the intersection between hope and melancholy, keeping you guessing with every passing note as each song unfurls with more complexity, confrontation, and abstraction than the last.
For fans of: Nothing appearing exactly as it seems, and MC Esher.
A concluding comment from a Taylor Swift superfan: “Sounds like someone’s put a fork in a can and rattled it around.”
Dear Alien track by track:
Release Date: November 8th | Producer: Sean Rogan | Label: Melodic Records
At first: The beauty and challenge of Dear Alien are establishing whether to surge forward side-by-side with the music or float a little behind, letting it guide you into unpredictable spaces before looping back around to where you first started. In this case, there’s satisfaction in letting go of the ground and embracing uncertainty. [3/5]
‘Half Blue’: Holland-Fricke’s signature purgatory-esque melancholy surges forward in ‘Half Blue’, proving her adeptness at creating music that sits at the intersection between now and then, forcing what oftentimes feels like an unnatural pathway into confrontation with unresolved nostalgia and the burden of fleeting moments. [3/5]
‘Dear Alien’: Together, Holland-Fricke and Rogan play with danger, exuding soundscapes that reach into sinister lines without ever committing fully. ‘Dear Alien’ feels like a natural gateway to discomfort—a song that invites you to revel in its taboos, dance around its flames, and then return home with nothing more than a secret. [3.5/5]
‘Dawning’: The dramatisation of many aspects of Dear Alien feels akin to relinquishing control, less in a passive manner and more pre-emptively to escape the burden of convention. [3/5]
‘Slow Thing’: Ghosting the lines of near-touches and hitched gasps with delicate but meticulous string arrangements, ‘slow thing’ feels like teardrops on dark nights as intimacy peers at the surface and slowly unfurls with every passing note. [3/5]
‘Worse than Before’: The power always thrives in the build-up, which is the case in ‘worse than before’, which plays out with the subtle monotony of thumping footstep-like notes, leading everywhere and nowhere, looping through patterns that seem to start and end all at once. [3/5]
‘Seem Asleep’: Holland-Fricke and Rogan seem to emit an effortlessness not always present in typical ‘experimental works’, with tracks like ‘seem asleep’ utilising intuition and distortion to create a more dreamlike, suspended atmosphere. [3.5/5]
‘For a.r.’: Blending nature with technology always feels like some kind of broader statement, but in the case of ‘for a.r.’, this feels more typical of a convergence that symbolises the organic nature of the musicians’ joint talents. The quiet harmony of every element carries the understated connection that speaks to their intuitive synchronicity, making each passing moment as rich and inviting as the next. [3.5/5]
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