gglum, the moniker of rising London-born songwriter Ella Smoker, announces her debut album and first for Secretly Canadian, The Garden Dream, out 29th March.
The Garden Dream feels like a deep moment of realization for Smoker. Coming after previous, formative 8-track projects Weak Teeth (2022) and once the edge has worn off (2021) it has opened up space for her to reach out to her past self and confront the ill ease that still lingers there. Though she wouldn’t call it a concept album per se, she describes the narrative of her full debut, The Garden Dream, as a kind of fever dream, toeing the line between potent memory and repressed imagination.
“At the time of writing it, I was having so many nightmares, just straight-up graphic and disturbing stuff. I think it was my subconscious telling me I had shit I needed to deal with, a lot of the mistrust I’ve had since I was a teenager. It was weirdly good timing, because I’m at a point in my life now where I’m actually pretty happy, and am in a good place to look back.”
In learning how to open up to herself, gglum ended up finding a kindred spirit in producer Karma Kid (Maisie Peters, Shygirl, Connie Constance), pushing past her natural bedroom-pop introversion to find joy in the process of collaboration.
Lead single “Do You See Me Different?” is intimate and atmospheric, “about the confusion, chaos and deflation you feel during a difficult relationship,” Smoker explains. She’s also shared the instantly memorable “Glue,” a song about “the desperation of wanting a broken relationship to be fixed again. Frantically scrambling to ‘glue’ things back together, but also feeling hopeless and numbing out.”
Last year, she announced her signing with “SPLAT!”, which was praised by The FADER, who named it a ‘Song You Need in Your Life,’ Stereogum, and Paste Magazine who called it “a dashing, noisy fit of emo-inspired garage rock with tints of TRL-obsessed pop hooks.” She closed out 2023 with the industrial, riotous “Easy Fun,” which Billboard called “a bold new vision of indie-pop.”
