On her new LP ‘Technicolour’, Holly Wild refuses to tidy emotion into something simple. The Sydney-based indie-pop artist’s second album is built around the contradiction that love can be euphoric and exhausting, confidence can sit beside insecurity, and the desire to feel everything can be both liberating and painful. Across thirteen tracks, she turns those tensions into bright, melodic indie-pop without losing the vulnerability underneath.
Opener ‘Pull Me In’ captures the rush of being consumed by attraction, carried by floaty vocals and an easy melodic lift. While ‘Only You Would Do’ follows with a more stomping, singalong feel, looking back at the complications of a relationship with enough warmth to keep nostalgia from turning sentimental.
Elsewhere, she pushes even harder, as ‘Nothing Heals If Nothing Hurts’ leans into rock-pop, building muted guitars and pulsing drums towards a bigger, more cathartic chorus. The title alone says plenty about the album’s philosophy: growth requires discomfort, and trying to avoid pain entirely usually means avoiding something important too.
While ‘Wild In My Imagination’ moves into more haunting territory, capturing the strange intensity of wanting someone without ever allowing the feeling to become real. That sense of fantasy, restraint and private obsession sits neatly alongside an album repeatedly interested in what people feel but don’t always say.
Then the title track ‘Technicolour’ closes the record with a more defiant pop-rock energy, presenting her as someone no longer interested in making herself smaller or simpler for other people. Here, brightness and darkness are allowed to coexist.
Produced with collaborators including Grammy-winning Brian Forbes, ‘Technicolour’ moves between dreamy guitars, acoustic intimacy, bubbly pop hooks and more forceful rock textures without losing its emotional centre.
Holly Wild’s strongest statement here is also the simplest. Being complicated is not a flaw, and on ‘Technicolour’, it’s the whole point.