Album review: Songs about grief cut deepest in Let's Eat Grandma's new record
Let's eat Grandma
★★★★★
Initially, Let’s Eat Grandma’s Rosa Walton and Jenny Hollingworth were compared to the scary twins from The Shining, partly due to their habit of dressing alike and fixing audiences with scary gazes.
But it also spoke to the fever-dream quality of their pop, which brimmed with a glorious wonkiness (it is no coincidence that one of their most beloved songs, Donnie Darko, is named after the esoteric art-house film).
They’ve trimmed some of the sonic weirdness for their third album, yet that isn’t to say Two Ribbons is a conventional record. Amid the gossamer pop and beats radiating a haunting effervescence, this is a stark and often dark coming-of-age LP.
It revolves around two traumatic life events – the death in 2019 of Hollingworth’s 22-year-old boyfriend from a rare form of cancer, and a major challenge to Hollingworth and Walton’s friendship.
Best pals since school in Norwich, the success of Let’s Eat Grandma put their relationship under pressure. But rather than mourning, on tracks such as Happy New Year and Levitation, they celebrate the fact they’ve moved on in life and, though still close, have also grown as individuals.
However, it’s Hollingworth’s songs about grief that cut deepest. Watching You Go, which she wrote and then re-wrote in an attempt to capture her shock and disorientation, is simply heartbreaking. And yet this is the opposite of a downer record, as we are reminded when Walton delivers a vaulting guitar solo on Insect Loop. It’s just one among many goosebump moments on an album that, forged in tragedy, is nonetheless a powerful testament to fortitude, friendship and the everyday courage of simply refusing to give up.
