ALBUM REVIEW: Gabrielle Aplin – ‘Light Up The Dark’

Following the success of ‘English Rain’, the first studio album from Gabrielle Aplin, ‘Light Up The Dark’ brings out a new sound in the English singer/songwriter.

Aplin rose to success after using her YouTube channel as a platform for her musical talents, posting covers of songs from the likes of You Me At Six and Paramore, which helped her gain a fanbase. This then led to the now 22 year old being signed to a label and paved the way for her to becoming the voice of a John Lewis advert back in 2012. She stated in February of the same year that she was in the midst of recording her first debut album. Aplin then released ‘Please Don’t Say You Love Me’ as her second single, shooting to the number 6 spot in the UK Singles Chart in 2013. This was just the beginning of Gabrielle’s success.

In May of this year, it was released that Gabrielle would be releasing her second studio album ‘Light Up The Dark’ in September. She released the first single and title track with this news, which got many members of her fanbase very excited for the album. ‘Heavy Heart’ and ‘Sweet Nothing’ were the next singles to be released before the album was released on the 18th of September with both receiving an excellent response online and ‘Sweet Nothing’ in particular received much praise due to the radio play of it after its release.

‘Light Up The Dark’ has a very different sound to her last album due to it featuring more of a jazz-like sound compared to ‘English Rain’ which was much more acoustic sounding, but the power of her lyrics still remains.

Tracks on the album such as ‘Sweet Nothing’ and ‘Slip Away’ convey the more upbeat and complete sound within the album. In particular, ‘Slip Away’ builds from the beginning and this alongside the powerful lyrics – “locked inside my mind, passing time with nothing to lose” – created one of my personal favourite songs on the entire album. The tracklist for the album conveys a contrast in the song titles with the sound of each track; ‘Skeleton‘, ‘Fools Love’ and ‘Slip Away’ all feature a rather uplifting sound. However, the titles of each of these tracks would give the first impression of being rather somber. This contrast allows listeners to focus on the lyrics within each track in order to understand fully what Gabrielle Aplin is singing about.

Overall, ‘Light Up The Dark’ is quite different from Aplin’s last album, particularly in the style of her sound. There are some tracks, for example ‘Sweet Nothing’ , that sound similar to singles on her previous album except they are more upbeat. It’s executed well and will most likely bring a similar success, if not more, than the previous album, which shows that Gabrielle Aplin is getting better and better with each new project.