From early glimpses of Waterbaby in viral collaborations with Hannes (‘Stockholmsy’) and Seinabo Sey (‘Sweet Life’), to her buzzy self-introduction on her 2023 EP ‘Foam’, the Swedish artist’s debut album ‘Memory Be A Blade’ arrives as a refreshingly personal body of work. It’s an elevation of the recent NME Cover star’s bedroom pop style into a richer sound and more confident vessel of self-expression.
As its title evokes, ‘Memory Be A Blade’ delves into Waterbaby’s tendency to dwell on the past, often to the detriment of her present. She sings on the wistful, deceptively cheery, title track: “Looking back on a lonely night / Looking back on that day / Memory be the sharpest knife / Memory be a blade”. The songs drift in a hazy, mellow suspension that envelops the record, forming a moving contrast with the razor-sharp fragments of self-awareness embedded throughout – chief among them the realisation that living through memories was holding her back from moving on.
Calling out her own relatable pathologies with unflinching candour makes for a bold statement of self-possession. From confronting her people-pleasing tendencies (“I’m like clay how you mold me / I twist and I bend,” she utters on ‘Clay’), to the surrendering of agency in relationships (‘Beck n Call’: “Beck and call, u spot me on the floor / Things u say, makes me want u more”), the album’s lyrical honesty rarely lets up.
Its sound is deliciously unplaceable, gliding between the indie-folk softness of Clairo and Faye Webster and more metallic, autotuned textures of Oklou and Charli XCX, bound by a throughline of vulnerability and self-interrogation. The varied soundscape was crafted with longtime collaborator Marcus White (Hannes, Anna of the North), whose closeness with the artist palpably informs the fluidity with which this music renders her inner world. But Waterbaby’s voice remains the record’s standout – a singular combination of gentle and deadpan, intriguing in texture and punctuated by a curious diction that makes the album’s heavier themes land all the more strikingly.
Where ‘Foam’ maintained a certain wry detachment from the listener, ‘Memory Be A Blade’ feels more willing to be looked at directly – something Waterbaby herself has acknowledged, having previously felt guarded about stepping into the foreground as the face of her work. The honesty and openness of her current approach to presenting this album feels like an extension of the music itself, a telling sign of an artist hitting her stride.
