Holly Macve
Tuesday, April 08, 20:00Authenticity. Everyone wants it, fewer have it, and making it come across as something to treasure rather than a boring everyday trudge takes some serious skill. In this vista of manufactured legitimacy and faux-relatability, Holly Macve emerges like a tumbleweed rolling through a neon-lit cityscape. Her new album, ‘Wonderland’, out today (11th October) via her own label Loving Memory Records, is a record that connects with such ease that it’s almost unnerving.
Macve, the Galway-born, Yorkshire-raised up-and-comer, has been infiltrating her current surroundings for years like a country noir sleeper agent. But ‘Wonderland’ feels less like a new chapter and more like she’s ripped all the pages from the book and started scribbling in eyeliner on the walls. “It kind of feels like a chapter of my life, and releasing it is almost like closing the chapter,” Macve confides, with all the nonchalance of someone casually mentioning they’ve just returned from a quick jaunt to the moon.
The album’s title is no accident. For Macve, ‘Wonderland’ represents “hope, dreams, and aspirations”. It’s a word that conjures images of Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole, of worlds beyond our own where anything – indeed everything – is possible. And in many ways, that’s exactly what Macve has been doing – tumbling through life with wide-eyed wonder, saying yes to every adventure that comes her way.