In announcing her long-awaited second album, Undone, indie-folk luminary Charlie Collins warned fans they were in for “some of the most honest, vulnerable music” she’d ever written. What made it read as a warning was the fact that Collins’ output thus far hadn’t exactly been your typical sunshine-and-roses, bubblegum pop-level fare – the Tamworth native had long worn her heart on her sleeve, with 2019’s Snowpine being one of the year’s most strikingly poignant releases. But its follow-up, she promised, would “expose a lot of who I am and what I was going through”.
Lo and behold, is an unapologetically heavy, sobering listen. But amid all the gut-wrenching rawness is a palette of tones so unpredictably colourful – shows Collins at her most vulnerable, yes, but it also shows her at her most confident, her most spontaneous and her most inspired.
