7/10

Some albums arrive polished and perfected, every edge sanded smooth until nothing unexpected remains. But the debut album from Living Too Late takes the opposite approach. Written, performed and recorded entirely by South Australian songwriter Jakub Tengdahl, 'Autochrome' embraces unpredictability, imperfection and instinct, creating a record that feels startlingly alive from beginning to end.

Across its ten tracks, Tengdahl explores memory, anxiety, displacement and the strange relationship we have with the past, all while shifting effortlessly between jagged indie-rock, post-punk tension, melodic guitar pop and bursts of controlled noise. It's an album fascinated by things that linger beyond their relevance: old technologies, old ideas, as well as old versions of ourselves.

The title-track immediately establishes this fascination. Built around a dynamic tension between momentum and weight, it feels like a meditation on obsolescence without ever becoming sentimental. Instead, it finds beauty in forgotten things, setting the thematic foundation for everything that follows.

Throughout the record, the artist at the helm demonstrates an impressive ability to balance melody with abrasion. 'Starting To Be' is one of the album’s most immediate moments, pairing infectious hooks with an undercurrent of uncertainty, while 'Erase' expands outward into something far more ambitious. Its shifting structures and bursts of noise create a thrilling sense of instability, as though the song is constantly threatening to collapse before pulling itself together again.

Lyrically, 'Autochrome' thrives on observations that feel both intensely personal and quietly universal. 'Lease Extension' transforms the everyday anxieties of modern renting into something almost dystopian, capturing the low-level stress that defines life for so many people without ever sounding preachy. Elsewhere, 'Conduit' strips things back emotionally, emerging as a subtle but powerful statement about action, momentum and escaping the endless cycle of self-analysis.

Musically, the album wears its influences openly while never becoming trapped by them. Echoes of Pixies, PJ Harvey and The Fall drift through the songs, but Tengdahl uses those reference points as ingredients rather than destinations. The result is a sound that feels familiar enough to be welcoming yet distinctive enough to stand apart.

With this initial collection, Living Too Late arrives on the scene as a bold reinvention. It delivers a record that embraces uncertainty, celebrates experimentation and finds surprising beauty within chaos. Ambitious, intelligent and emotionally resonant, it stands as one of those rare debut albums that feels fully formed while still leaving plenty of room for future evolution.