Indie Light

Lilac Haze is the performing name of Katrina Swift, a bath based dream pop artist, who cites the likes of The Cure, Eva Cassidy and Fleetwood Mac as inspirations. Today, I’ll be reviewing her debut EP ‘My Dreamworld’ which was released October 27th 2023.

‘Daisy Girl’ kicks off with an atmospheric little sting, before flowing freely into the soft, liting vocals of Haze, her ambient, synthy tones are breathtaking, and just the perfect thing to remind me why I love doing this after a hiatus and a stressful rebrand. The melody is gentle and yet it grabs you and holds you tight, making sure you experience the breadth of Haze’s talent. I don’t want to risk saying this too early, but especially for a debut EP this is an excellent first track, and what I’m sure will be a tremendous release. 

‘December Dreams’ opens with a longer, more instrumental, synthy backing, which melds with the vocals as opposed to being replaced by them. It’s another track that has that flowing ambience I love from dream pop artists, but it has a little more edge, a heavier percussive beat that injects a little more intensity into track and counterpointing the lightness and dreaminess with heaviness and depth. It’s hard to say as they are all great entries, but I think this might just be my favourite track on the EP. 

‘My Dreamworld’ is the title track of the EP and so has extra weight to bear in terms of expectations and Haze, as I anticipated knocked it out of the park, showing a deeper and huskier note to her voice which blended well with the soft chords and sonorous ambient backing to create another track with weight behind it, and without the heavier percussive elements either. Haze is clearly a multi-faceted and incredibly talented performer and If you do anything today I urge you to check out this release. As I said before the previous track was my personal favourite, but this one is a close second, it’s just got a lot of what I think makes good music. 

‘Under the Blue Velvet Sky’ is bittersweet and melodic, and it fills you up inside from the first moment until the last. I kinda alluded to some issues above, and struggles with running this site, but seriously, getting the opportunity to hear talent and beauty like this is so rewarding, and as a closing track to the album it is perfectly served. You can stop reading now, and go listen because the most important thing I could possibly say is that I’ve had this release on repeat for two days now and I’ve just fallen in love with the music. 

So that’s what I thought of Lilac Haze’s EP ‘My Dreamworld’ and if you want to check that out for yourself then head on over to Spotify. While you’re at it, make sure and support the artist by following them on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.