Listen To Freya's Stunning Sophomore Album The Fifth

Open, intricate and intimate, The Fifth, is a remarkable body of work from one of Melbourne’s finest emerging artists Freya. Plug in your headphones and find somewhere to get comfortable with this beautiful album.

Having started recording music as Freya in early 2015, Tamara Westwood, has been prolific to say the least. Releasing 3 EPs, a debut album and today a sophomore album in The Fifth.  Carving out her own genre of Dreamo along the way; a melting pot of 90s emo, dream pop, shoegaze and post-rock that has become distinct, refined and entirely Freya’s.

The Fifth has been written around Freya’s life experiences in 2017, with the deliberate intention of finding weight in words and allowing them to take the focus of the album. Song writing on The Fifth takes on experiences of change in a relationship, new relationships forming, moving houses, introspection and depression, isolation, love and finding comfort. Songs can feel cathartic, terrifying, sweet and all feelings in between. A grounded and honest album, The Fifth, is lyrically brave and bountiful in its emotional intelligence.      

However, the thing that impresses me most with Freya’s latest release The Fifth is the sheer scope of it.  The album is huge in every sense of the word. Sonically explosive, layered, intricate and intelligent. Songs flip from expansive and galloping to stripped and bare in deft plays on composition and dynamics that roll out faultlessly. No element of any song or transition sounds abrupt or out of place, yet at the same time nothing sounds monotonous or repetitive. The Fifth is an album that deserves to be heard as an album in its entirety. At times euphoric and triumphant, in others daunting and delicate, The Fifth, is a standout album of 2018.

Highlights come for me in billowing opening track Unrecognisable, a song that pulls you close throughout before detonating its outro into an indie dreamscape of synthesisers and soaring vocals. Lead singles Nineteen Hours and Breath and Chime stand as strong as ever, both built on hook laden guitar lines and an untouchable cool that sounds to have been pulled straight out of a teenage coming of age movie. Final track New Year feels like a flex of everything Freya has developed throughout the album, finishing the album on a euphoric explosion of sound that begs for hands to be thrown in the air to.

To have this sound and emotional openness attributed to one individual is simply remarkable. Freya is simply remarkable.

Stream, download and listen to The Fifth on all good digital platforms today and be sure to follow along with all things Freya right here.