Holly Humberstone opens Cruel World by holding back. So It Starts barely registers as a song, more like a breath, a soft orchestral swell that feels unfinished on purpose. Then Make It All Better arrives and suddenly there’s shape, a flickering beat, her voice sitting low in the mix, close but not quite centred. She doesn’t rush to meet it. Lets it come to her.
That restraint doesn’t last everywhere. To Love Somebody pushes outward, big chorus, clean lines, the kind of track built to land immediately. It lands cleanly. Maybe too cleanly. You can feel how easily it slots into the current version of indie pop, polished, diaristic, endlessly replayable. It’s effective, but it doesn’t linger in the same way.
She sounds more interesting when something feels slightly off. Die Happy leans darker without announcing it, the bassline doing most of the talking, steady and low, while the synths expand around it. There’s a gothic edge in there somewhere, but she doesn’t underline it. Just lets the tension sit. Her voice stays calm, almost detached, which makes the whole thing feel heavier than it should.
That push and pull runs through the record. The songs that sit right at the surface, the singles, the obvious ones, tend to smooth themselves out. Cruel World has that same polished glide, her vocal drifting over a rhythm that never quite stops moving. It sounds like it was built to be chosen. It also feels like it’s holding something back.
Then she pulls everything in again. Lucy doesn’t try to fill the space, acoustic guitar, a vocal that barely rises, nothing else competing for attention. She sounds more grounded here, less concerned with shaping the moment. It just sits. You stay with it.
White Noise goes the other way, lighter, sweeter, almost too eager to please. It clicks into place quickly and then slips away just as fast. There’s nothing wrong with it, it just doesn’t leave much behind.
The second half starts to loosen its grip. Red Chevy moves differently, a bit more physical, a bit less contained, and she follows it rather than controlling it. Then Drunk Dialling drifts further out, hazy, slightly unfocused in a way that actually works for it. It feels less pinned down, like it could stretch past its own edges if it wanted to. It doesn’t quite go there, but you hear it trying.
Peachy cuts through all of that. Piano, simple chords, no real attempt to dress anything up. “God knows I’m 24, I’m still a baby.” She leaves the line where it lands. Doesn’t soften it, doesn’t push it further. It hangs there longer than anything else on the record.
By the time Blue Dream arrives, the album feels less interested in landing moments and more interested in drifting between them. It’s softer, more atmospheric, not immediate in the same way, but it adds to that sense of things opening up rather than tightening.
Then Beauty Pageant closes it out and suddenly the theatrical side of the record comes into focus. The piano has that slightly staged feel, almost like it belongs to something larger, and she leans into it just enough. Not subtle. Not trying to be.
The tension never really resolves. The cleaner songs sit right at the surface, easy to grab onto. The better ones keep slipping just out of reach, darker, quieter, a little less certain of themselves. You end up following those instead.
Cruel World will be released on April 10, 2026 via Interscope Records.
Holly Humberstone plays Beanfield Theatre in Montreal on June 4, 2026.
Photo credit: Silken Weinberg
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