Holly Humberstone ‘Cruel World’ review: simply sublime songwriting

As she reveals in our recent interview, the genesis of Holly Humberstone’s new album Cruel World came when she and her siblings had to remove their belongings and say goodbye to their childhood home for good. “At some point, you’ve got to let go of your childhood and take agency and realise that you’re an adult in the world,” she told Rolling Stone UK, with equal parts melancholy and defiance.

Cruel World, the singer’s best album yet, grapples with the universal feeling of childhood slipping away, transmitted through brilliantly specific vignettes. “I’m back in New Cross with the blues,” she sings in ‘Make It All Better’ of her adult life in south-east London and the innocence she left behind: “Send me flowers, send me nudes.”

While the stories told here are well-travelled ones, they’re elevated by songwriting that is sharp, incisive and perfectly crafted. “My life is not that romantic day to day: chicken bones on the floor and a trip to the Londis,” she told Rolling Stone UK of how her days are spent in New Cross, but the romanticisation of the mundane is what gives the album its spark: “I wanna be old and gross with you,” she sings on the sparkly alt-pop of ‘Make It All Better’, revelling in the ordinary. “No regrets, I’ll fade out with you.”

The dichotomy at the heart of Cruel World revolves around love representing both the best and worst of what life can throw at you (“The greatest hits and the deepest cuts” as she puts it on the fantastic lead single ‘To Love Somebody’), and after coming face to face with real life, she’s decided she wants to live it all even more intensely. “Hit the gas, I want it fast, want it reckless,” she sings on ‘Die Happy’, one of countless lyrics on this superb album that distil the messy process of ageing with glorious, pinpoint precision.