Kelly Lee Owens - Inner Song

Resident Advisor

The week before Kelly Lee Owens wrote most of the lyrics for her second album, Inner Song, she underwent a body release trauma session, an experimental t..

Pitchfork 77

On her second album, the Welsh electronic musician leans into both her loops and her lyrics, seeking something spiritual in the act of repetition.

The Guardian 0

(Smalltown Supersound)
The Welsh musician-producer unleashes her own vocals while digging deeper with brooding electronics

Delayed to show “solidarity” with record shops threatened by Covid, Kelly Lee Owens’s second album finds the banging techno DJ venturing further into the realm of electronic pop. The digitals are still on point. Arpeggi’s creepy retro-futurism recalls Boards of Canada and earlier electronic experiments in Germany in the 1970s.

But when Owens was on tour with Four Tet, Kieran Hebden urged her to stop hiding her singing voice under a bushel. Now some actual songs – such as the resolute, sad banger On, or L.I.N.E. (Love Is Not Enough) – find the Welsh musician in full coo. The sweetness is deceptive: L.I.N.E. weighs up the compromises people make in relationships; solitude, she concludes, beats warping your essence.

Related: Kelly Lee Owens: ‘My patients were my career advisers’