London-via-Cambridge singer, songwriter and producer Tommy Barlow makes his debut on Young with ‘Earth Killer’, a bracken-rough debut single that’s honest to a fault.
Opening with a kind of fog-bound stillness, ‘Earth Killer’ festers in the grey-hour aftermath of a relationship ending. Like a slow excavation of abandonment, Barlow circles the same wound again and again, with lyrics clawing over themselves with a confessional stream-of-consciousness. Cycling through blame and admission, surfacing only to sink back under, “I know I’m not right / but give me some slack, dear.”
Nocturnal and brooding, frost-bitten at the edges yet burning at its core, ‘Earth Killer’ climbs out of some ethereal liminal plane. A slow burn caught between resentment and surrender, hand-built from damp earth and the cold air. A remarkable, weathered debut that falls to its knees.
Photo by Josh Renault
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