Holly Lovell - Hello Chelsea (2025) Hi-Res

Piano-led debut with a classic singer/songwriter feel. Holly Lovell spent her teenage years in Australia, where her dad was born, then moved to the US where her mum was born. Still US-based, she recorded her debut album in the Wisconsin woods, and the album cover shows her wearing a tourist-friendly t-shirt in a subway carriage.

The title track takes its cue from the Chelsea district of New York, the same one Joni Mitchell wrote about half a century ago, but here Holly sings: “I used to love it but now it kills me”. I’ll leave you to work out which singalong anthem makes up the introductory number ‘If I Can Make It There’, but it’s a clever setting of the mood for an album about the concrete jungle of where dreams are made [sic, as per Alicia Keys].

‘Louis & Me’ is the big single, with a delightful melodic shape to match the story Holly tells. ‘If I Had It My Way’ has the melancholy lyric “the closer you get, the farther I feel”, before a pedal steel underscores a chorus where her pretty vocals are saturated with echo. This is almost Greenwich Village coffee house music, although there is enough variety on the album to keep things interesting; New York, after all, is a city of many faces.

There are hints of Brandi Carlile and Cat Power in her excellent voice, and either of those songwriters would be proud of ‘Helpless Mother’, which seems like a very personal song about Holly’s parents (“used to bother me”) that is all the better for being encountered midway through the album. It is complemented by ‘Family’, which offers the warm lyric “one by one, we’re back up on our feet”.

Speaking of family, ‘Lion’s Den’ includes Holly’s brother Caleb on drums, although the confessional lyric (“me and my vices, me trying to hide it”) must concern him. ‘When Did I Lose You’ sees Holly come to terms with an ex, with Caleb’s particularly pronounced drums creating paranoia and uncertainty; the last minute of the song is akin to a breakdown, albeit preceded by a singalong chorus.

Holly dares to title a song ‘I Love You’, which begins the second side of the record. Insistent crotchets pulse underneath Holly’s vocal, which varies from low to high in her register; it doesn’t sound like much of a love song, but it is lovely. That song dissolves into ‘Grief’, a mood piece with some fine guitar picking from Courtney Hartman that matches Holly’s vocal line, which may well be affected by the passing of the singer’s uncle.

Closing track ‘100 Different Ways’, which features clarinet in tandem with sparse piano chords, is another song about grief, which Holly sings right at the top of her range so she is struggling to hit some notes. It hangs on the final chord for 40 seconds, to leave the listener gazing into themselves and maybe motivate them to call someone they love.

This is music as a comfort blanket, even though some of it may be uncomfortable.