Telling Me arrives as Lucy Kitt’s most self-assured statement yet, though not without a few sharp edges that catch in the light. The album leans heavily into her trademark folk warmth, but Kitt pushes that tenderness further than ever, flirting with arrangements that sometimes threaten to swallow the intimacy she’s known for. Still, there’s a magnetic pull to the way she frames emotion: melodies that feel sun-bleached and lived-in, lyrics that reveal their sting slowly, and a vocal presence that anchors the record even when its sonic ambition wavers. In Telling Me, Kitt offers a bold, if occasionally uneven, evolution, one that invites listeners to sit with both its beauty and its bruises.
The opener Blink sets the emotional temperature of Telling Me with a clarity the rest of the album keeps circling back to. Built on a gentle sway of acoustic guitar and a rhythm that feels like a held breath, the track finds Kitt at her most direct, almost startlingly so. Her vocal is close-mic’d and unadorned, carrying a quiet urgency that makes every line feel like it’s being confessed in real time. Yet for all its tenderness, Blink also hints at the album’s central tension: moments where the arrangement swells just a touch too boldly, threatening to eclipse the subtlety that gives the song its power. Even so, as an opener, it’s a compelling thesis statement, intimate, yearning, and just imperfect enough to feel undeniably human.
Waiting Game widens the lens of Telling Me by stepping outside Kitt’s own interior world and focusing on the quiet, accumulated grief of friends who struggled through lockdown. It’s one of the album’s most affecting examples of her narrative generosity: she gathers these stories, of stalled dreams, fraying routines, and the slow, disorienting passage of time and shapes them into something tender rather than bleak. Kitt sings with the patience of someone who has listened first and written second, allowing the song to become a vessel for other people’s endurance. The arrangement stays understated, almost protective, giving the verses space to unfold like remembered conversations. In Waiting Game, Kitt proves that her storytelling isn’t confined to autobiography; it’s rooted in a deep attentiveness to the lives of those she loves.
The title track shifts the album back toward a more intimate register, but this time Kitt steps into the role of witness rather than protagonist. The song traces the emotional fallout of someone close to her navigating a painful breakup, and Kitt handles the subject with a mix of compassion and unflinching clarity. She captures the small, raw details, the second-guessing, the late-night spirals, the way heartbreak can make even familiar rooms feel uninhabitable without ever sensationalising them. The track is one of the album’s most restrained, allowing her voice to carry the weight of another person’s unraveling. It’s a quietly devastating piece, and in its empathetic precision, Telling Me reflects the album’s core strength: Kitt’s ability to hold someone else’s story as carefully as her own.
Without Her emerges later in the album as a quietly show-stopping moment, one that may not announce itself loudly, but lingers long after the last note dissipates. It’s a personal standout for good reason: Kitt folds a sense of absence into every corner of the song, letting space and silence speak as eloquently as her lyrics. Her vocal delivery is fragile but assured, carrying a grief that feels lived-in rather than theatrical. The arrangement is barebones, just enough instrumentation to cradle the melody, never enough to cushion the emotional impact. What makes Without Her so affecting is its restraint; Kitt lets the ache breathe, trusting the listener to sit inside it with her. It’s one of the album’s most resonant pieces, proof that her most powerful storytelling can come from the softest touch.
Resting Blues closes Telling Me with a heaviness that feels both inevitable and deeply earned. Here, Kitt confronts the pain of losing a loved one head-on, but she resists the temptation to wrap that grief in poetic distance. Instead, the song moves with the slow, deliberate weight of real mourning, each line a careful attempt to name an absence that still feels too large to speak around. Her voice is subdued, almost echoing, as if she’s singing from within the quiet that follows loss rather than about it. The arrangement stays stripped-back, letting small details—an intake of breath, a softened guitar phrase—rise to the surface. As a final track, Resting Blues doesn’t offer closure so much as companionship in the ache, ending the album with a kind of fragile honesty that lingers long after the music fades.
In the end, Telling Me stands as Lucy Kitt’s most expansive and emotionally generous album to date, one that navigates the messy intersections of personal truth and borrowed sorrow with uncommon grace. Its imperfections are part of its character: moments of overreach sit alongside flashes of startling clarity, creating a body of work that feels lived-in rather than polished. What ultimately binds the record is Kitt’s voice, not just her literal instrument, but her willingness to listen, absorb, and honour the stories around her. Telling Me isn’t simply a chronicle of her own experiences; it’s a testament to the quiet, complicated ways lives intertwine. And in embracing that, the album offers something rare: folk music that feels both intimately drawn and universally felt.
For fans of: Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Laura Marling
‘Telling Me’ by Lucy Kitt is out now on Wineberry Records.
Words by Ell Bradbury
