Evanston SPACE: Alice Phoebe Lou

Alice Phoebe Lou at SPACE in Evanston, IL // Doors: 7pm | Show: 8pm // Tickets: $15 ADV // $18 Day Of.

Alice Phoebe Lou releases her third studio LP as an independent artist. "Glow" is a breathtaking work, full of visceral, star-dusted songs delivered in her crooning tones, against a backdrop of scuzzy guitars, sauntering bass grooves and mesmeric piano sequences.

When we’re used to the hustle and bustle of everyday life, having all that noise taken away can leave a silence that’s just as loud. For South African-born, Berlin-based artist Alice Phoebe Lou, it was an opportunity to articulate her deepest thoughts and emotions into a new album, Glow.

“I went through a lot this year, like so many people,” Alice says. “I spent more time alone than I ever had. I shaved my head. Had an ego death. Fell in love. Had my heart broken. I was a raw little mess. And that was what I wrote about.” The album provided an outlet for Alice to “blow off steam”, and one into which she poured a series of memories, thoughts and experiences.

Before, she’d thought that songs needed to “say something”, to deliver some kind of profound message. The very idea of a love song seemed overdone, or trivial. “But this album simply poured out of my heart and my subconscious, and there was no stopping the lovestruck nature of them,” she says. “Sometimes love, love lost and the ways in which these matters of the heart affect us, are the most relatable feelings in the world.” She was going to be as honest as she could bear.