Kyla La Grange’s third album, While Your Heart’s Still Beating, is an unflinching coming-of-age confessional that explores the tension between youth and adulthood for a generation stuck in suspended adolescence. With extraordinary dexterity, La Grange has created a piece of work that feels epic in scope and subject matter with a startlingly raw, unflinching intimacy at its core, and emerges as her most accomplished songwriting yet.
Opener ‘Neverland’ plays like an anthem for the lost millennial: a beautifully crafted slice of alt-pop that crests on the euphoria and subsequent sadness of a night out (‘But I’m still staring in the mirror at 3am/ Sad to wash the glitter off’) before plunging the listener into a late-night reflection on self-worth and anxiety. It captures a wide-eyed hunger for life set against the terror of acknowledging youth’s transience (‘When your memories are fading/ This one will be phosphorescent, still alight’). We are invited to bear witness to some of La Grange’s innermost thoughts and a theme fundamental to the album: the fear that she’ll look back one day and see a life that wasn’t lived to its fullest.
Special Guests:
Lindsay Munroe
Mantaraybryn