Album Review: One Is Always Heading Somewhere

Whole cultural movements are centred on the prevalence and effect of heartbreak and sadness in pop music. “What came first, the music or the misery?” muses Rob Fleming in High Fidelity, Nick Hornby’s chief amateur philosopher of heartbreak and its causes. Like many of us, Fleming can’t do without it and fills the soundtrack for his tour of lost girlfriends with the most miserable pop he can think of. In the end, it heals him – like the best music does for all of us.

Womb’s third album, One is Always Heading Somewhere, is a palpable attempt to create just such playlist from scratch – a whole album to serve this sort of purpose, one of reflection, introspection, sadness but perhaps also some release, catharsis, hope and repair.

This is a collection of twelve songs each occupying the same dreamy, floaty and slowly rippling soundscape, apparently made from layer upon layer of synthesisers, plucked acoustic guitars, slowly revolving percussion and Cello Forrester’s reverb-drenched and almost angel-like voice. It’s cinematic, ethereal, melancholic – and clearly a refined and now highly tuned version of their sound now developed over three albums.

The centrepiece here without doubt is Unto, an almost painfully simple reflection of a lover’s position in her relationship, Forrester’s vulnerable and almost quivering vocals recorded through an auto-tuner. “I am at your beck and call” she repeats without a glimmer of enthusiasm, and with barely obscured defeat. Only You, Erosion and Sometimes carry the same sorts of emotional resonances. These seem not to be songs of destruction, loss or endings, but more like acknowledgements of an unhappy surrender, as if it is a soundtrack to flatlining in defeat.

On the first few listens the soundscape and quality of the performance took me along for its slow motion trip, and I wanted repeat listens and more, enjoying perhaps a sense that catharsis was on its way. The electro-pop sound, the spaciousness and vocals reminded me of Slowdive on their early album Souvlaki, while the vocal delivery is often somewhere between Phoebe Bridger’s and Taylor Swift’s most breathy and sensual confessional pieces.

The singular vision of this record is apparent from the outset. Coherent is how some critics might describe a collection like this. But on the other side of that coin lies the risk of something becoming boring or repetitive – that in the end nothing much stands out, nor can be distinguished from other parts. That’s where I got to. I listened in waiting for the wrenching sucker punch of Scott Street, or the blood-curdling catharsis and release of I Know The End, but remained stuck out on Womb’s ocean, swirling or spinning in slow motion, almost without sensation.

We’re all familiar with catharsis, at least at a conceptual level – purging, cleansing, purification or releasing something from inside from listening to emotionally dense and moving music. Without the trigger for that, One is Always Heading Somewhere seems to not quite achieve what it could have – to be a collection of great music with emotional depth that delivers the joy of release as well. These are great songs in their own right, but there’s one song missing – the one that flips us over the edge to land on our feet at the end.