spill tab – Angie

Label: Because Music
Released: 16th May 2025

spill tab has always felt like a bit of a shapeshifter – whispering soft truths one minute, blowing the walls off the next – but on ‘Angie’, she turns that unpredictability into a full-blown world. This isn’t just a debut album; it’s a daydream in motion: heartbreak and feral joy, weird textures, scrappy edges and a perfectly imperfect tangle of emotion. There’s chaos here, but it’s considered. There’s vulnerability, but it never begs. There’s pop, but not the kind that plays it safe.

It opens with ‘Pink Lemonade’, a fizzy, anxious swirl of jazz backbeats, sharp guitar jolts and a kind of melodic overstimulation that somehow feels peaceful. It’s like waking up hungover in a beautiful hotel room and not remembering how you got there – half surreal, half comforting, completely disorienting in the best way. That disorientation becomes part of the record’s DNA. Every time you settle into something soft and dreamy, spill tab pulls the floor out from under you. And when she hits you with noise, there’s always a moment of stillness tucked inside it.

The title-track, ‘Angie’, might be the most literal embodiment of that emotional whiplash. It starts soft, almost like a lullaby, then detonates into distorted guitars and pulsing panic. It’s not subtle, and it’s not supposed to be. This is a full-frontal meltdown wrapped in reverb, a love song, a hate song, a mood swing in real-time. By the time she’s whisper-screaming “I don’t, I don’t, I don’t”, you’re already in too deep to back out. It’s obsessive, it’s feral, it’s addictive.

‘Assis’ slows things down, switching into French and drifting into something slinkier and sadder. It’s a breakup song dressed like a lullaby, dreamy and cinematic but humming with tension underneath. Then there’s ‘Hold Me’, which lands like a soft gut punch. It’s one of those songs that doesn’t try too hard to be poetic; it just tells the truth. It’s sad, warm, a little broken, and maybe the most intimate thing spill tab’s put on record. You can hear the immediacy in it, like the words fell out of her in one go. It doesn’t need to shout to land. It just needs to ask, softly, for someone to stay.

But just when you think this is going to be a full album of floaty heartbreak, she flips the table again. ‘De Guerre’ is pure reckless energy – sweaty, synthy, feral. It sounds like someone sprinting out of a club in heels at 2am, heart racing, brain empty, just vibes. It’s dirty and defiant and completely brilliant. Even the more low-key tracks like ‘Morning Dew (Interlude)’ have a pulse beneath them, like a deep breath before another swing.

What makes ‘Angie’ so special isn’t just how good the songs are (though they are, ridiculously so). It’s the way they feel lived-in, like each one is stitched together from late-night notes, app entries and early-morning regrets. There’s no sheen of perfection here, no forced pop polish. Instead, you get the sense that spill tab is showing you exactly what she wants to show, how she wants to show it. Her voice – that soft, conversational hush – never overdoes it. It just glides over the wreckage with devastating ease.

‘Doesn’t That Scare You?’ and ‘Wet Veneer’ round out the record with a sense of emotional clarity, if not closure. They don’t offer answers, just more honest questions. And that’s the heart of ‘Angie’: it doesn’t pretend to have it all figured out. It just sits with the feelings – the mess, the craving, the grief, the thrill – and lets them play out in real-time. The fact that it sounds this good while doing that is just a bonus.

spill tab isn’t here to compete in the pop race. She’s building her own weird, beautiful lane and inviting us in – no expectations, no explanations. ‘Angie’ is a debut that whispers, screams, dances and aches all at once. It’s emotional without being performative, clever without being smug, and consistently thrilling without ever begging for attention. A total triumph, and a gorgeous mess worth getting lost in.