Album | Broken Twin – May

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Broken Twin has a luxurious, emotional voice that feels perfectly made for belting out love songs. Majke Voss Romme’s stage name might suggest hopelessness, but whatever darkness this album does have is not truly so bleak. As the spring title indicates, it’s filled with sounds of imminent transformation. ‘Glimpse of a Time’ has soothing ticking and strumming beneath the imploring lyrics, and becomes positively shiny in the chorus. “Sorrow lost and sorrow won […] I don’t know how to be young”, she sings in ‘Sun Has Gone’, but the instrumentation is heading for sunrise, all anticipation and ascending notes: it’s pacy and suspenseful, reminding me a little of Hilde Marie Kjersem and Ane Brun.

‘The Aching’ opens May as it means to go on, with a cathartic ballad. “Everyone knows what the aching needs”, which is, obviously, an album like this. It should be sold with a tub of ice cream welded to it. Mourning lyrics are paired with *inspirational* strings that make me think it’ll inevitably be used in an advert (and RUINED). In fact, ‘The Aching’ is too smoothly polished for me to completely love it, but Romme’s talent is obvious; her voice carries the songs, with well-pitched instrumentation giving them a gentle nudge. ‘River Raining’ has fuzzy twangling touches on the guitar, unpredictable texture around the climactic thrust of the song.

Out of Air’ is another soul-searching ballad, made for everyone at the gig to lift their lighters up; ‘When Pilots Go To Heaven’ is more solemnly timeless, a lone voice echoing. The final song, ‘No Darkness’, feels like a weaker track to conclude on, slowing to a dirge, but Romme pushes through pain with an air of wanting her listeners do the same: “There will be no darkness, I will fill your space with light”. Through the thick clouds, piano and the trappings of sorrow, this debut is pure dramatic pop, with a nostalgic simplicity, making me think of a similarly named but much more dance-based act, Twin Shadow. I half want her to start playing synths and join him in a duet, but Broken Twin already has a strong solo voice.