Ah, that difficult second album. Well, what exactly do you do for an encore? Orla Gartland had the right idea; she ran away with her mates and created indie supergroup Fizz who delivered the frankly joyous debut album ‘The Secret To Life’ last year.

For an artist like Gartland whose songs are distilled from interrogating her lived experience to the nth degree, the multitude of new stimuli from working, writing and touring with new people must surely have had a hothousing effect, whilst also providing her space to process the last couple of years since the success of her debut album turned her into a famous ‘Woman On The Internet’.

A vivid and adventurous affair, Everybody Needs A Hero builds on the self-deprecating wit of its predecessor with added whimsy and attitude, painting bold melodic strokes and jumping genres in a single bound.

Sound of Letting Go delivers the kind of high gloss, percussion heavy production you’d expect to find Billie Eilish or Caroline Polacheck submerged in. It’s a welcome surprise as is the hi-energy indie sleaze-tinged Backseat Driver. However, the brass powered fear spiral Three Words Away provides the most surprising moment.

Little Chaos, Kiss Your Face Forever and recent single Late To The Party, featuring Declan McKenna, show that despite all of this growth, Gartland hasn’t lost her inclination to craft a Grade A indie anthem. If anything, they’re tighter than ever before.

The cinematic grunge thrust of title-track Everybody Needs a Hero, which is likely to spark a sync war between Marvel and DC to acquire it for the closing titles of their next epic, provides one the album’s most effective lyrical gut punches. “Honey, I don’t have much time, my parachute has come untied “  

Despite all the bombast, there’s plenty here for fans of Gartland’s ballads. The album opens with the album’s most sparse offering, the short but emotive Both Can Be True, while the outstanding Mine finds Gartland delivering heartbreaking, high romance replete with intricate orchestral treatment.

‘Everybody Needs a Hero’ should help establish Orla Gartland as a blue-ribbon songwriter in the alt-pop universe. If major artists aren’t already lining up looking for Gartland to write them hits, they soon will be. Throw what ever superlatives you like around. This album should be life-changing moment for Orla Gartland.

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