Photo Credit: Silken Weinberg

Two years after her breakthrough debut album, Holly Humberstone doesn’t so much return as she re-emerges, quieter, steadier, but no less intense. ‘Cruel World‘, her second studio album, trades the restless late night spiral of ‘Paint My Bedroom Black’ for something more composed: a carefully built universe of memory, girlhood, and love in all its messy, contradictory forms. If the first record was about feeling everything at once, this one is about sitting with it.

Shaped by a period of self-discovery and a return to childhood memory, the album draws on childhood trinkets, old films and the experience of leaving her family home. Humberstone reframes the past into something softer, almost dreamlike.  Love sits at the centre of the record, whether romantic, platonic or ‘quietly feminine’, but it is never presented as a fixed idea. Instead it is something that shifts, lingers and unsettles.

‘So It Starts’ opens the album with an instrumental sound that sets a reflective tone, signalling a record more concerned with atmosphere than immediacy.  ‘Make It All Better’ builds on this, with a more expansive production style that marks a step forward. It hints at a broader sonic palette while still staying grounded in Humberstone’’s musical identity. 

‘To Love Somebody’, the lead single from the album, marks her return with confidence. It is one of the most immediate tracks here, capturing the album’s core tension. Love is both reassuring and destabilising, something you reach for and question at the same time. The title track follows with a similar clarity, centring that feeling of attachment and absence in a relatable way. 

‘White Noise’ shifts perspective again, focusing on isolation in crowded spaces and capturing a specific kind of modern loneliness. ‘Lucy’ stands out as one of the most affecting tracks, a softer, more considered moment that reflects on young womanhood with empathy and control. 

The second half of the album introduces a shift in energy. ‘Red Chevy’, ‘Drunk Dialling’ and ‘Blue Dream’ lean into desire and obsession which add to the earlier tracks’ storytelling. These tracks feel looser yet more instinctive, capturing the rush and instability of longing in real time. 

Humberstone moves effortlessly between moods, capturing the bittersweet, sometimes overwhelming nature of human connection. The closing track ‘Beauty Pageant’ captures this feeling in all forms. Stripped back to piano, it places Humberstone’s voice at the forefront, It addresses themes of image, expectation and identity, particularly within the context of being a woman in the music industry. It is a measured and self-aware ending that brings the album’s themes together.


Across Cruel World, Holly Humberstone lands on a version of herself that feels more certain in its uncertainty. Throughout the album’s storytelling, she leans into those tensions without trying to solve them, letting love, memory and identity sit in their most honest form. It’s a record that feels more confident and deliberate than her previous releases, resulting in Humberstone’s most assured work to date.