With a warm, awakening air, like stretching your limbs first thing in the morning, Chloe Foy starts her debut album Where Shall We Begin with the titular question. But like the title, it’s not inherently a question, but more of a rhetorical statement to herself as she goes to sort through a decade of memories, feelings, and quiet dedications. Like someone addressing a messy cupboard that has long been left unsorted, and with the welcoming tone of a teacher regarding a class of small children sitting in front of her, Foy commences her task.
To say that Where Shall We Begin was a long time coming seems like something of an understatement. Foy has been making consecutively bigger ripples since she first appeared with her debut single back in 2013. With all its instrumental embellishments “In the Middle of the Night” might sound a little twee with age and perspective, but each subsequent single and EP has seen the Gloucestershire-via-Manchester songwriter honing her skills and style. Her classical background elevates her above others (Foy started her musical journey playing the cello, and took up guitar at 14 years old); the stately string accompaniments distinguish her music and never feel inauthentic. Now, on her debut, everything feels like it’s coming to a head, wrapping up the best aspects of her music into one fairly succinct and handsome document.
Foy co-produced alongside her musical collaborator Harry Fausing Smith, and recording in Pinhole Studios in Manchester, the duo capture a sumptuous yet homely sound. The acoustic guitar arrangements are bolstered and given emotive regalness thanks to welcome string accompaniments. These tracks would stand up on their own in a bare form (just watch any of Foy’s solo performances for proof), but like Laura Marling and her longtime collaborator Ethan Johns, the additional instrumentation only helps to accentuate the tone and feel of the songs here. Strings elevate the highs and understated percussion drives the momentum, all weaving between Foy’s guitar and soothingly charming voice.
At its best, moments on Where Shall We Begin shimmer with a golden streak that wraps up a multitude of seasonal feels, from warm summer sun, to brisk spring air, to crisp autumnal shades. A high string note spills out of the crescendo on “Deserve”, carrying the song to its end. On “Work of Art” there’s an ebullient swing at play in the song’s rhythm, exuding the warmth of affection for a live crowd (which Foy sings about with breezy deliberateness). “Square Face” feels like an end credits song to a movie, as words trickle out of Foy’s mouth like she’s recounting a childhood melody. Foy said that the songs here felt “much less stifled than previous releases” and she couldn’t speak truer words about her music: there’s not a single moment on here that doesn’t sound utterly delightful to your ears.
While Foy might not be as convicted a lyricist as Laura Marling or Johnny Flynn, or as wistful and worn as Beth Orten, similarities do inevitably surface – especially to Marling. On “Evangeline”, Foy narrates with an assured confidence, vowing “I promise to keep you warm” in the song’s final moments, while on “Asylum” her folkier side shows with plucked guitar notes. Foy works with more impressionistic phrasing though, almost too careful never to wrap up a song in anything too specific as she explores the likes of existential worries and the long-lasting grief of losing her father to depression. On the intricate and sweeping “Left-Centred Weight”, for example, she explores death anxiety, cooing about how “Hollow heartache / throws stone shapes” before collecting herself; “Go easy, brain,” she adds, stopping herself getting carried away.
If Where Shall We Begin falters, then it’s never in a way that takes any immediate enjoyment for listening to it as a whole. “Bones” offers up a darker hue with accordion notes sinking in the shadows of the song, but the track doesn’t sit as comfortably with all the surrounding material as others like “Shining Star” do. The album could also comfortably have finished with the throbbing mantra of “And It Goes”, leaving the aforementioned closing track “Square Face” to feel like something of a coda. And even in itself, “Square Face” would be better to end on the solo vocals of Foy rather than a somewhat superfluous 40 second swirl of strings that follows a stark, personable moment.
Relatively speaking though, these are minor quibbles, and Where Shall We Begin is as strong a debut album as we could have hoped for. It sounds incredibly considered and carefully put together, from each song choice to the instrumental arrangements. As she herself admits, Foy took time to get the album right; heeding her late father’s advice, she is following her passion, and her dedication and talent is on full display here.
Acknowledging it’s a cliché, she says that “songwriting is therapy” and Where Shall We Begin resonates as such. “I may have been daydreaming,” she concedes on the opening track, capturing very much the sweet enrapturement that can wrap you up when listening to her album. There’s no time for daydreaming though, as Foy has found her first proper starting point. The next question seems obvious: what next?
