8/10

Molly Mckew’s latest offering 'in the distance there is a party (i do not go)' is a tender meditation on inertia, desire, and the fragile balance between connection and solitude. The Melbourne-based artist has long been a voice for emotional clarity in murky times, and here she sharpens that gift into something hauntingly precise. Across eight tracks, she turns hesitation into poetry and stillness into a form of resistance.

From the first note of 'How I Want To Preserve It', Mckew’s lo-fi folk-pop world feels intimate, like entering a half-lit room where every breath and tremor of harmony lingers in the air. Her voice carries an airy yet grounded weight, wrapped in layers of ethereal textures that shimmer like fog in morning light. It’s a sound both ancient and modern, woven with Celtic undercurrents and the restless ache of contemporary alt-folk.

On standout single 'Courage Is the Nectar Here', she leans into quiet revelation, transforming vulnerability into power with the kind of unguarded lyricism that recalls early Laura Marling or Julia Jacklin.

Throughout the record, she surrounds herself with a small ensemble that amplifies her emotional core rather than crowds it. Rowena Wise’s violin sighs and swells like an unspoken thought, while Ryan Oliver’s keys and Sam Billinghurst Walsh’s guitar sketch the soft edges of melancholy.

What makes this new LP so affecting is its refusal to rush toward resolution. Molly Mckew chooses to sit with the ache until it becomes luminous. This is music for those who’ve stood outside the noise of the world, feeling everything at once and finding beauty in the restraint.