On her eagerly-awaited debut album ‘Like a Real Thing’, Creepy Crawly (the creative vessel for Manchester-based artist Rachel Cawley) turns the drudgery of office life and the quiet devastation of disillusionment into a glowing, deeply human collection. It’s an album that feels tender, unfiltered, and echoing with the strange comfort of recognising your own lost hopes.
Cawley’s story reads like a modern fable of artistic survival. After London spit her out, she found herself stuck in the grey hum of corporate monotony, secretly scribbling lyrics during mind-numbing Zoom calls. Those scribbles would blossom into songs that crawl out of the cubicle walls and reach toward the moonlit possibilities she once imagined.
The album, co-crafted with producer Joel Harries in Manchester, is a tapestry that moves between celestial dream-folk, spectral electronic textures, and the gnawing edge of ‘90s alternative melancholy. It’s as if Big Thief and Cat Power collided in a ghost-lit alley, whispering secrets to each other over the thrum of an anxious city. Her vocals float above it all with an eerie clarity, both inviting and uncomfortably close.
Tracks like ‘The Tide’ and ‘Afraid to Fail’ are steeped in a bittersweet tension, balancing fragility with an undercurrent of defiance. Lines that explore the subtle, pervasive damage of everyday sexism and the ghost trails of past relationships feel raw but never gratuitous. Instead, they pulse with the clarity of someone determined to reclaim their narrative.
Though built on personal experience, ‘Like a Real Thing’ manages to hold a mirror up to our own quiet reckonings, those 3 a.m. thoughts we hush down with Netflix or cheap wine. It’s a soundtrack for anyone clawing their way out of the beige fog of “shoulds” and into the wild terrain of “wants.”
By the end, you’re left with haunting melodies echoing in your head and also the sense of having shared a secret with someone brave enough to name the quiet battles we all fight. Creepy Crawly’s debut is a map out of the cubicle maze and into a more luminous, messier freedom.
Photo Credit: Debbie Ellis