lilo are the British duo Christie Gardner and Helen Dixon who have just released their debut album Blood Ties. To say it’s a culmination is something of an understatement – yes, it builds and expands on their promising early releases, but moreover it stands as a monument to the bond between the two women, which has been growing since their childhood.
And it is that connection that is the strength at the heart of Blood Ties. Having that foundation has meant they are unafraid to bring out their most honest and painful feelings, knowing that the other will support them and help them render them into something beautiful and healing through their musical connection.
We are delighted to have Christie and Helen’s firsthand accounts of the backstory of each track on Blood Ties, which only deepens the enjoyment of this emotionally stunning record.
- “Crash The Car”
Helen: We loved producing this track. From the very beginning, we had such a clear idea of what it needed to sound like, and had so much fun making some big noises!
Christie: It’s about having unbridled rage at a man who has hurt your best friend, a product of being so angry yet feeling isolated on the outside, where your upset builds so much you physically can’t hold it in anymore. “Crash the Car” explodes like we wish we could, you want to kick his teeth in so instead you make a song.
- “Cycling”
Christie: “Cycling” came out of the journey I used to make cycling up the Old Kent Road to the school I worked at in 2020. It explores the duality of being in a caregiving role and trying to help people that you’re not realistically equipped to help to a full extent. I found that I would often have a really great time at the job, connecting with children whose lives had very much been upended by Covid, trying to fill the educational gap they’d just experienced. Some days it felt like we were all moving together, things were getting a bit better, their reading was better etc.
But very often I would feel a sudden shift and a wave of setbacks and I felt like I simply lacked the faculties to deal with issues as big as the ones they were facing. I went into the job with no training, being paid £70 a day, and especially into the winter months I felt totally and completely useless. “Cycling” pulls these feelings together and also the consistent thought that I was trying to maintain which was that I could do a good job, that I was doing a good job, and that no one at all was going to benefit from me being so hard on myself. I think lots of people have this feeling when they’re working on something they believe in, that they feel passionately about the work they do but there are times when you zoom out of your work and see an unfathomable and unreachable goal. But this shouldn’t stop you.
- “Blood Ties”
Helen: “Blood Ties” is about being so close with somebody that you almost feel like you’re the same person, and it’s only really once they go through something horrible that you don’t understand that you remember you are in fact two distinct people with two different brains. It’s a song about unconditional love, and finding your way through life alongside somebody else.
Christie: We named the album after this song because it’s basically this tie that runs through everything that we do. The album sees us looking at each other’s lives from each other’s perspectives and really living closely within each other both emotionally and creatively and even though this song maybe touches on the idea that that’ll always be an impossible thing, reaching for it has made this album what it is.
- “Used To Be”
Helen: We had big orchestral dreams for this song, and are proud of what we managed to create with no budget, one flute and three string players. A true team effort!
Christie: “Used To Be” is about loneliness no matter what your relationship was like. It’s quite funny how dramatic it is as a song because it is fundamentally about a relationship that you’re not that bothered by. But in the end losing something still hurts and you have to build yourself up again. Losing bad things is still rough when you’re not sure who you are when left behind.
- “It’s Not The Same In Winter”
Helen: I guess this song doesn’t take too much explaining – it’s about how sometimes, in the depths of a crisis, or indeed in the depths of winter, I go numb and all my feelings disappear.
A couple of years ago, I was in full throes of a breakup, and had gone away for the weekend to try and channel it into writing. The trip was a disaster, I couldn’t see the wood for the trees and wrote absolutely nothing. I went for a walk on the beach and phoned Christie: I said, ‘it’s so weird, I can’t remember a single thing about my ex. I can’t picture what he looked like, and all the memories I have feel like they belong to someone else’. I tried looking at photos to trigger something, and nothing happened; I felt like I was looking at a stranger. I guess the brain is a funny thing, and while it was initially a relief, sooner or later I started to wish that I could feel like my feelings were real, not from some mania-induced nothingness.
- “Leo”
Christie: Leo, Leo, Leo. “Leo” is the only song where I can say, yeah that one is just sad. Was sad at the time, sad now. Start to finish, just a bit sad. It’s just about feeling hopeless and uncomfortable and feeling like you need to be plucked out of your life. Either to be lifted to something better or to simply be eaten by a big bird.
The chorus of “Leo” makes reference to a car journey that features in a couple of our songs as a little motif where we were driving to *Nevada* and the person driving said ‘who wants to go 100 miles an hour’ and all I could think was ‘absolutely fucking not’ and as he slammed on the pedal I looked at Helen then looked out the window and watched the amber landscape blur past. In that moment I felt incredibly scared because I was so happy – I couldn’t think of anything worse than tapping out here in a way as stupid as this. But when I came to write “Leo” it was at a time when I genuinely thought maybe that would’ve been fine. But it’s still a hopeful song because it calls for that journey again and that happiness again which was all still to come even if I didn’t know it then.
- “Better Conversation”
Christie: “Better Conversation” is a song that responds to how we’ve both arguably made lots of very sensible decisions in our lives. Of course that’s not without exception but we more often than not will take the path most tried and tested. Entering our mid 20s we both wanted to just have some more fun and just let go. “Better Conversation” just says that actually we can fuck shit up a little bit and probably regret it but it’s gonna be a good time. Probably why it wasn’t until our mid 20s that we got into our first physical brawl at pitcher and piano Winchester lol. Life starts now.
- “Nevada”
Christie: We’re back in the car, the car driving 100 miles an hour through the Nevada desert. This song is fundamentally inspired by my ex sleeping with my friend. ‘Breaking bread’s what you call giving head’. The break up at the time felt completely monumental. I was so torn apart, to the point where I felt like I couldn’t be alone at all.
The only thing that I was then looking forward to at that time was the trip that Helen and I were about to take to see our friend Izzy in California. We’d had it booked for so long. Then this is where we are in the song. I still had these feelings of sadness and anger but when I was having a great time with my friends in the sunshine they completely disappeared. I felt upended but completely ready for everything new. We’re on the move, the sadness is on the move. I kept saying the whole holiday that I was looking for my ‘king princess look alike rebound’ which very much inspired the last verse, however you’ll all be disappointed to know I didn’t find them and any explicit actions alluded to in the last few lines were completely hypothetical.
- “Step”
Christie: This song was a real joy to record. It was a one take wonder and features the gorgeous voices of some of our closest friends, as well as Helen’s mum playing the clarinet. It moves me every time just for that.
Helen: “Step” is essentially about feeling unprepared in every way for something (whether it be a break up, teacher training, a house move; the three pillars of my September 2022) but knowing that if you take it one step at a time, break down the tasks, feel just one thing at once for each moment, then you’ll get out the other side. It can so often feel that everyone has everything together but you and that’s simply not true.
- “Closing Time”
Helen: “Closing Time” is about wishing that a relationship hadn’t ended so badly, and the conflict that that ending creates as you ricochet between hating somebody and really missing them. It is kind of sad, but actually the outro explores the catharsis of letting go, truly accepting what has happened, and how things now will be going forward.
It turns out that this letting go is quite a hard feeling to capture in an authentic way, and the outro took us so! long! to get right. We were working on it right up until the night before we left to record at Middle Farm, trying out different arrangements, instruments, melodies, all sorts. I think we had almost given up, and in a last ditch attempt, just stripped everything back and recorded me humming along with the guitar. Suddenly everything fell into place: that take was the one we used for the album, and if you listen closely you can still hear the creaks from Joe’s broken chairs we were sat on haha.
It was the last song written for the album and the writing process was a bit horrible but very healing.
Blood Ties is out now via Dalliance Recordings (listen/purchase). You can find lilo on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
