7/10

'The Dome' feels like the point where Fil OK's ambitious We're in the Water trilogy finally exhales. After 'The Steeple' explored the mind and 'The Belltower' turned towards the body, this third and final album focuses on the spirit by exploring connection, resilience, compassion, transformation and the search for meaning in the middle of ordinary life. Across twelve tracks, the artist brings those ideas together through expansive electronic pop that feels both intimate and architecturally huge.

'Fresh Air', featuring Carolyn, opens with the feeling of renewal, while 'Jugglin'' and 'Tightrope' deal more directly with balance and the practical strain of trying to keep everything moving. 'Desert Island Bed' and 'Permanent Frown' then turn inward, asking what happens when habits and fear begin to isolate us from ourselves and others.

The record also becomes especially affecting when it widens its perspective. The track 'Forty Years On', featuring Will Eaves, reflects on what might matter when looking back over a life, while the title-bearing 'We're in the Water' turns shared existence itself into something worth celebrating. There's a playful humanity in that idea; that being alive is strange, difficult and miraculous enough without needing to pretend we fully understand it.

Electronic textures remain central, but the inclusion of the 12 Ensemble gives the album an added sense of scale, particularly in the moments where real strings open up the arrangements. 'Closer Than My Wife', featuring Josephine Warden, brings another distinctive vocal presence into the record, while 'More Love' pushes the album towards one of its broadest emotional statements.

Then comes 'The Dome' itself. But instead of ending the trilogy with a dramatic conclusion, the title-track imagines renewal as a place you return to when the world becomes overwhelming. Not to escape life, but to find enough perspective to reenter it.

Across a whopping thirty-six songs, Fil OK has spent 2026 asking what it means to think, live and grow. 'The Dome' doesn't answer, but it does leave us with a sense that the searching itself may be entirely the point.