April Lawlor – known creatively just as April – began writing songs when she was only ten years old. By last year, she’d started posting her bedroom creations onto Soundcloud, and she quickly started winning fans. An early supporter was American indie-pop musician Alec Benjamin who invited her as support on to this European tour last year, leading to April playing a string of shows across the continent.

Her earliest supporter of all though was far closer to home. Inspired and motivated by her dad, April’s work retains a wonderful homegrown feel. The 21-year-old County Kildare singer and songwriter specializes in lusciously layered lo-fo indie-pop creations, each shaped, manipulated and guided by her own beautifully rich but understated vocals.

Luna is her latest offering, a four-track EP that follows hot on the heels of New Conditions, her previous EP released earlier this year. It is another lockdown record, produced, edited and recorded during the Coronavirus pandemic over Zoom, perhaps a process not too far removed from the DIY approach that has spawned most of April’s work to date.

Opening track Forever – To Feel Like Tonight sets the theme for the EP – it is a sparse, ethereal affair with a haunting, doubt-ridden lyric that gets under your skin and keeps you hooked with its curious electronic flourishes and oddities. Watching You Disappear begins in a softer fashion, a warm and sweet counterbalance to its predecessor, and a captivating slow burner of a pop track.

Would You Let Me In is a reimagining of one of April’s old Soundcloud demos, reworked into a slickly produced new song, while the EP’s title track Luna closes things out in beguiling nature, a tender lyric (“I doubt myself but I never doubt you / I make impressions, they always come true / Still I wish living was as easy as it is to love you”) that skips joyously in and out of its little touches of piano.

Overall, this is a fragile collection that seems to document feelings of self-doubt and loneliness, but it is an entirely mesmerising one too, and it leaves us wanting more from this talented young artist.

Luna tracklist:

1. Forever – To Feel Like Tonight

2. Watching You Disappear

3. Would You Let Me In

4. Luna

Watch the official video for Watching You Disappear here.

Author: Joe Sharratt

Joe Sharratt is a writer and journalist based in the UK covering music, literature, sport, and travel.