It’s been 4 years since Holly Humberstone final took to the Coachella stage. Wearing a black bikini, stripy armwarmers, camo pants, and a defiant sprint of black eyeliner, the British musician enraptured the desert with a neat set of singles and EP tracks, lithely lyrical and kinetically synthy, melancholic pop that balanced earnest feelings with big-pop manufacturing. Her greatest monitor at the time, the luminous-versed “Scarlett,” reverberated via the crowd: “I said, ’Darlin’, will we go the distance?” followers screamed to one another, “darling” made much more pleasant in worldwide mouths.
Humberstone returns to Coachella to play the Gobi stage with a wonderful debut album already beneath her belt and an advanced private fashion. Weekend one, too, marked the launch of her sophomore file, Cruel World. “It felt crazy to finally be in the desert,” says Humberstone. “I’ve made an album I’m super proud of, so I feel extremely lucky to get to share it with the world at Coachella.”
Humberstone, who has toured with Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo since, remembers being right here in 2022: “I was super carefree and had this naive confidence about me! I feel like, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve weirdly become more nervous and self aware. So this time felt a little more scary, but ultimately, more rewarding.”
The set kicks off with the new file’s lead single, “To Love Somebody,” a track impressed by watching a pal’s brutal heartbreak, set to full-bodied, harmonizing vocals and lyrics made to be shouted again. “It feels like a communal song, and it’s really been connecting with people in crowds in the way I hoped it would,” she says. More songs embrace the airy-stringed “Beauty Pageant” and the disco-inflected “White Noise.” “A lot of this new album was written with a live context in mind because of how much I love touring and my band.” It’s a tremendous close-knit group, consisting of Lauren O’Donnell Anderson (drums), Jack Louis Rennie (guitar), and Seth Tackaberry (bass guitar and keys), who’ve faithfully toured and carried out along with her.
