When performing an autopsy of a relationship, it can be easy to fixate on just the good or the bad. When this kind of dissection turns into music, it often becomes a record of a relationship that was either poisoned from the get-go, or that will be cherished forever like a pristine scene encased in a snowglobe. What’s rarer is an account that not just accepts there were good and bad elements, but embraces this fact so as to paint a picture of a real-life relationship that acknowledges and tracks the highs and lows, the good and the bad, the energy and the exhaustion. As the title of the opening track to Orla Gartland’s new album states: “Both Can Be True”.
This zigzagging is very much Gartland’s bailiwick, as her 2021 debut album Woman On The Internet displayed. She has a knack for carving out the little details of human existence and finding ways to make these anxieties catchy hooks that ping about in your head. On her follow-up album, Everybody Needs A Hero, she’s doing much the same but even better. Her hooks are sharper and meatier, her focus more narrowed, and her instincts improved. It’s the sound of an artist taking stock on what worked and what didn’t, and honing that to make her music better.
A lot of these improved signs can be found on the first side of the record, and they offer up a variety of qualities to appreciate: “Little Chaos” delights with a cathartic and infectious chorus, but also in a simple detail like the way Gartland varies how she sings the word “chaos” each time. “Backseat Driver” has an LCD soundsystem-like mix of lighthearted percussion and syrupy synths. “Simple” captures the feeling of contentment in intimacy between two people sharing space. Even the aforementioned 90-second opener “Both Can Be True” is an efficient scene setter done over gentle piano chords.
Where the album teeters is frustratingly the gentler moments. Gartland often has the idea sussed out, but the execution is sometimes lacking something. Empathetic “The Hit” evokes the early work of her countrymate Wallis Bird, but the backdrop of folksy shuffling acoustic guitars and soft snares is achingly beige. Penultimate track “Mine” fares better, the starry strings adding a cushion-like softness to a tale of reclaiming agency – but it does dampen the momentum of the record’s final stride. (The final title track aims for an explosive outro, but isn’t as purgative as it aims to be.) There’s tenderness in Gartland’s words and delivery, but if anything it feels like a production issue; including Gartland herself, the album boasts five producers. While it’s not quite a too many cooks situation, it speaks to the missing textural consistency across the album, which makes sparer moments feel that bit more out of place.
All those producers alongside Gartland do know how to make the flashier moments hit though. “Kiss Ur Face Forever” is a dizzyingly fun slice of indie pop rock that captures the lustful and feverish bluntness of intense love that also dares its subject to make the next big step. There’s even some fun wordplay thrown in for good measure (“Let’s play a game of emotional Monopoly in the name of monogamy”). “Late To The Party” stomps and chatters as its digests inherited baggage in a relationship while some punchy and muddy sax notes add to “Three Words Away”’s memorable swagger.
Taken altogether though, it’s hard not to be satisfied with Everybody Needs A Hero. It improves on its predecessor, is chock full of quotable lyrics (“I’m three words away from absolutely fucking ruining your life”), and even where it stumbles, it still manages to pick up the pace soon after. Perhaps best of all is all the ups and downs Gartland captures; sometimes it feels like she’s reckoning with the relationship in real time, and that adds to the impassioned core of the album. For all its occasional faults and both its incredibly likable peaks, it feels roundly human. It teaches that good comes with bad, and vice versa. She says it simply herself: “I fucking love you / But this shit is hard,” she exhales on the opening track. That’s a real relationship for you.
