Historically, young women’s music has been overseen by older men: producers, label owners. While removing one gender from the creative equation is neither easy nor desirable – of course men are capable of allyship – one of the pleasures of Ider is that these two twentysomething British female pop auteurs talk directly to their peers in a way that feels largely unmediated.
Megan Markwick and Lily Somerville’s debut, Emotional Education (2019), captured the experience of being young and at sea, aware of the contradictions of adulthood but still possessed of a freewheeling sense of possibility. Synths combined with moody pop and melancholic R&B to make Ider a name to watch.
Album two arrives with an independent release, and with a renewed mission to delve deep. If Shame had an alternative title track, it would be Bored – a break-beat-driven broadside gleefully listing all that is bogus and bankrupt: “the shit that you chat”, “impatient perfectionism”, success. Two more songs are named after feelings. Embarrassed and Shame double down on how these emotions hold women hostage. Most personal of all is the Auto-Tuned and digitally spacious Midland’s Guilt, about how Somerville couldn’t wait to leave Tamworth but now feels aghast at losing her accent.
