Fable – Shame

Having already been compared to the likes of Thom Yorke, Holly Cosgrove, known as Fable, has started well. The Devon-bred artist debuted in 2014 with EP Parasite, before taking a break from music. She returned in 2020 with Thirsty, a single featuring on her new release, Shame, with Naim Records. The album was produced at a slow pace with Jonas Persson, working around the obstacles and standstills of the pandemic, but this has by no means harmed the result. Fable’s roots as a 90s child underpin her sound, which dances between trip-hop, neo-soul and alt-rock, and in fact, amalgamates them all without losing a sophisticated, attractive style. 

Womb and Orbit share those characteristics most reminiscent of Amy Winehouse in all her magnetism. Both are ruminative and umbral, rendering images of shadowy jazz corners with her teasing lyrics and a satisfying pull. Filtered, brittle drums, thumping bass and gritty riffs make these songs quite irresistible, despite feeling overly similar to each other. 

Fable likes her effects, perhaps too much so in The Reaper, where a whispery rap, xylophone-like clangs and creaky synths awkwardly merge into cinematic drama. But Fall Away’s almost spacey tones are used sparingly so as not to drown the sparse and gentle piano and poetry of “just as the sun forgot today, I let it fall away”. A crumbling, cosmic crackling sound makes tangible this metaphor. Similar surrender is leant into with Heal Yourself and its cyclical, meditative vocals which eventually melt behind a charged beat reached after a satisfying array of layered percussion. Surrender gives way to Thirsty’s rage of fuelled rock proportions; “you expect me to believe I’m not the whole universe striking up a melody?” is one of several hitting lines.

Shame is a lamentation of the state of the world, a witty but uneasy attack on toxic media and its hyper-fake realities. A slowed rap is eventually overwhelmed by (by now familiar) guitar riffs, as is Fable by modern pressures. The feeling of the 90s is slipping through the fingers of those who once enjoyed it, and the sarcasm of “it’s such a shame” leaves one aware of a scary thought – that despite feeling shame, society carries on anyway.

Onion Brain is a weary ending of slightly melancholic blues. The key change feels like time inertly passing as Fable sadly sifts through vanished good intentions. She relies only on vocals, which hover beautifully above the music. Fable possesses a softness, an effortless cool, which glows here as it did in the beginning, with swelling strings, eerie trills and unforced vocals – but she provides quite a journey in between. From resigned to enraged to enamoured – after all, who feels the same as they did even yesterday? Shame is a multi-directional, spectral fusing of 90s influences, but at the forefront are the present-day pressures on Fable’s generation, and it feels neither erratic nor unsure of what it wants to say.

Georgia Howlett

Shame is released on 29^th July 2022. For further information visit Fable’s Instagram page here.

Watch the video for the single Orbiting here: