Fine is the union of Alice Kat and Liam Marsh (aka Kid Chameleon). That should not work, as the sum of great parts often makes for a fragmented musical whole. However, this is an album that snorts derision at such an assumption, or at least it would do, if it was not too indie cool to indulge in something so base as an actual snort.

The album is one of beautiful antithesis. Lyrically it could easily be dismissed as a heart break album with constant references to lost love, as seen in One Year On and the feelings of regret that refuse to subside:

Watered down
I’m slight of losing grip
I had hold of you so close but life got me to let go

Now it’s spiders on the windows of the nights that are drawing in
Summer came and you left
I still feel your traces crawl under my skin

Or the malaise caused by the sheer pretence of feigning recovery as depicted in Where I Came / Where You Left:

Where I came and you left
It’s just how it is
I’m not doing too well
I smile too much to tell

However, keep digging throughout the album and the regret increasingly turns into hope for the future, or at the very least a resignation that it is all for the best. At My Feet states:

Don’t repress
Please process
I want to move forward
I thought the world was ending
But it’s always been at my feet

And in the superlative stand out of Skin:

I threw all my thoughts out of my head late last night
My idea of you all sucked up through a note
At first my heart broke a little inside
But then I shrugged it off and smiled
It’s life

Musically the aesthetic veers everywhere as well. This augments the aura of confused emotionality that we have all experienced in the throes of heartbreak and recovery at some point in our lives.

As such we see If This Is Love, One Year On and Little Voices saunter through various nuances of male / female harmonies and sparse, fluttering jangled riffs/melodies, that assume beauty from the very first notes. Similarly At My Feet and 2023 commence with the same template, before crashing through various realms of lo-fi rock, as if to typify the torment.

Beyond the above, they visit perfect twee-pop machinations in Where I Came / Where You Left and an almost Dresden Dolls-esque impassioned mania in I Sleep So Much Better Now and Skin, as the album refuses to let the listener settle into any sense of prolonged melancolic uniformity.

So far, my favourite album of 2021 and the seriously impressive debut album that their four previous EP’s always hinted at.

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