In the middle of a chaotic summer, somewhere between flooded country lanes and a battered Vauxhall Corsa, lilo began to piece together what would become Blood Ties.
Christie Gardner and Helen Dixon had already been writing songs together for nearly half their lives – since school, swapping folk CDs and entering songwriting competitions with borrowed guitars. But this was something else. Between late-night drives to gigs and demo sessions that refused to settle, they began asking what it meant to make a record that captured the scope of who they really were. Blood Ties is the sound of that question taking shape – not as a polished answer, but as a lived-in document of friendship, fragility, and quiet persistence. Their soft, breath-close harmonies have drawn comparisons to First Aid Kit and Karen Carpenter, but lilo move beyond those familiar shapes. This is a record that makes its own space: emotionally precise, deeply intimate, and unafraid to sit with its own ache.
The album opens not with heartbreak, but with fury. ‘Crash the Car‘ simmers with the helpless anger of watching someone you love be hurt. Written from the perspective of a friend standing by in the wreckage, it’s protective and tender, but edged with something sharp. The harmonies are delicate, but there’s a tension beneath – a fraying, restrained violence. It’s a striking beginning for an album that rarely raises its voice, but never softens its feeling.
‘Cycling’ slows the pace, slipping into quieter reflection. Written while Gardner was working at a primary school during the pandemic, the track captures the emotional fatigue of trying to care for others while feeling unsure yourself. The repetition of cycling becomes a metaphor for carrying on – not out of certainty, but because there’s no other option. The song is simple, and all the more powerful for it.
The title track is one of the album’s most stripped-back moments, exploring what it means to be bound to someone – by blood, by memory, by time. You can hear in their closeness that lilo embody the quiet understanding that some ties never fully loosen. The arrangement whispers, giving the harmonies space to breathe, and the emotion lands softly but heavily.
‘Used to Be’ and ‘It’s Not the Same in Winter’ dwell in the aftermath of emotional distance. The former reflects on a faded relationship, though it remains ambiguous – the lines could easily be addressed to someone else, or to an old version of the self. “I push my hand through the air / I try to find you there, / and it falls where you used to be,” they sing, grasping at something that no longer has shape. ‘It’s Not the Same in Winter’ goes further. Dixon describes the strange feeling of forgetting someone who once mattered deeply, of looking at old photos and not recognising the person in them. The gentle ambiguity in the lyrics blurs the line between memory and self-identity, ultimately the erasure of something once important.
Midway through the album, ‘Leo’ and ‘Better Conversation’ offer two perspectives on doubt and desire. ‘Leo’ is impressionistic, a flicker of a wild memory wrapped in soft harmonies: “Leo take me for the ride, the ride of my life.” ‘Better Conversation’ responds with more clarity, asking for honesty and connection, even when it’s hard to get the words right. There’s a quiet daring in the lyrics – the courage to ask, and keep asking. The line “What is talking, if not singing, stringing vague pictures together?” captures something essential about lilo’s writing: thoughts caught mid-form, carefully placed but never over-explained.
‘Nevada’ brings a sense of heat and movement, stretching into alt-country territory with dusty slide guitar and a wandering, unanchored feel. There’s a new space here – both sonic and emotional – a rare moment where the album looks outward rather than inward or back. ‘Step’ brings things back into focus, a song of tentative progress and careful hope. “If I take a step, you can step / before you know it we’ve learned the dance,” they sing, finding strength making small progress. The final track, ‘Closing Time’, doesn’t tie everything up. Instead, it fades gently, leaving space for what came before to settle. Like much of the album, it trusts the listener to sit with it rather than search for resolution.
Throughout, Joe Futak’s production is understated and intimate. The arrangements – all soft guitar, ambient texture and space – never crowd the vocals. Everything serves the song. That restraint is crucial to the album’s clarity: nothing is forced, and nothing is rushed.
Blood Ties is a debut that feels fully realised, yet lilo don’t present themselves with bravado. Instead, they arrive as they are – two people who’ve spent more than a decade writing songs together, letting their lives gradually blur into their music. Childhood friends tracing the contours of their friendship with disarming clarity and love. It’s not a grand statement or reinvention, but something quieter and more enduring: an album that listens as much as it speaks, unfolding like an ongoing exchange between two voices that instinctively know when to hold back, and when to lean in.
‘Blood Ties’ is released on 28th March via Dalliance Recordings
