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On a debut album shot through with grief and emotion, the deep, intimate friendship between the members of Low Girl fuels an almost telepathic interplay. Is It Too Late To Freak Out? sees the indie four-piece intermingle their voices and guitar melodies while vivid, endlessly curious soundscapes sprawl into extended vamps, holding tight to both tension and tenderness. It’s a collection filled with exploratory songs that unfold with momentum, the sound of a group of musicians who are deeply attuned to each other.
At its heart is the idea of telling one’s own story: how much to share, how much to keep for oneself – two questions frontperson Sarah Cosgrove asked herself while writing these 11 tracks. Here, she taps into painfully universal themes without being too overt: mental illness, family dynamics, ghosting, feeling small in a big world. “Our music speaks to triumph in the face of misery,” she explains. “It’s about turning those darker moments into something you feel like you've overcome, and pushing towards making yourself a better person.”
Since 2021’s peppy Big Now EP, Low Girl’s singles have been postcards from that journey, and Is It Too Late To Freak Out? is a fully-realised dispatch from this same pathway – imbued with an urgency, ambition, and devastating potency only hinted at until now. In the past four years, the band’s lives have changed considerably. As the accolades have accrued – airplay across BBC Radio 1, 6Music, and Radio X, slots at Reading Festival and SXSW in Austin, support from DIY and Spotify – they have also spent time on the road, performing headline tours as well opening for the likes of The Murder Capital, Swim Deep and Pom Poko.
Low Girl initially started out as a solo endeavour for Sarah, as a means of exploring a tumultuous inner world through art. Over time, the project has expanded to include her sibling Tom (drums), and bassist/guitarist Bradley Taylor and keyboardist Toby Morgan, whom she met while studying at Lincoln University. As an independent act, the creation of Low Girl’s debut was a process unadulterated by commercial constraints or expectations; the band can attest to the thrill of an ever-changing road map. “We want it to be hard for people to pin us down and put us into a category,” Bradley affirms.
The result is a collection of astounding sonic range – from colossal hooks that soar over waves of distortion (‘Doing My Time’, ‘2007’), to mixing layered textures and horn flourishes (‘Driveway’). Written and recorded between Bedford and rural Yorkshire, Low Girl were intentional about ensuring the sonic diversity of the album, nodding to the atmospheric dream-pop of Canadian group Alvvays, as well as Bradley’s lifelong love of emo. ‘Handbrake’, an exhilarating adventure in genre-hopping, throbs and glistens with a quietly ecstatic joy, while ‘Overgrown’ offers a deeper foray into unexpected territory, melding distorted riffs with pop-facing vocal lines.
Is It Too Late To Freak Out?, therefore, is the result of absolute devotion to the craft and fine-tuning. Low Girl understand what it means to fight for the music, to make it the best it can be; the more hardships they have had to weather as individuals, the more precious their moments of collaboration have become.
Stirring centrepiece ‘Ctrl’ – which speaks to the complex afflictions of living life with chronic obsessive-compulsive disorder – was born from a particularly affecting moment in the studio. “I remember feeling like I had a headache, because I was ruminating so deeply over some unfinished lyrics,” Sarah explains. “I knew I had to express exactly how I felt in order to set my own narrative; to go for gold while remaining aware of my own vulnerabilities.”
Created by Toby, who has a background in graphic design, the album’s collage-style artwork offers a way of communicating trauma in a way that words alone cannot. “On the cover image, there are dozens of small details, drawings and broken things. All of this reflects the content of the music, too: it’s purposely non-linear,” he explains.
Crucially, however, the album ends on an uplifting note. The seven minute-long ‘I Love All My Friends’, which features a gorgeously-arranged piano outro, engages with feelings once locked away – the give-and-take between happiness and clarity. The song’s title is repeated like a mantra in order to ground its author, bringing her back down to Earth as the realisation dawns: one’s close friends will always be there when everything else seems to be crumbling.
“Working on that song felt like a form of mindfulness,” Sarah affirms. “It made me realise that when you're going through difficult times, that's when you grow the most; that's when you can feel the most connected to the world around you.”
Visceral, anthemic and alive, Is It Too Late To Freak Out? is built on a pact made between four best friends to wade through the mess together. The creation of the album has allowed Low Girl to look towards a future filled with promise, not shying away from painful experiences but instead embracing them as part of the band’s rich, intricate tapestry.