ollowing the release of her precocious debut album, 2016’s Long Way Home, bedroom auteur Holly Låpsley Fletcher took time away from music to take stock, to do voluntary work with teenagers, to train to be a doula and to inadvertently become a big influence on Billie Eilish. The palette of sounds she draws from on the long-awaited, and largely self-incubated, follow-up is familiar – her pitchshifted vocals lend her an androgyny at times, as on First, in which she gives the illusion of duetting with herself – while the ability to conjure emotionally potent songs from the most minimal of raw materials nods to James Blake. What is less familiar are her more outward-facing lyrics. Whereas her debut was all about the personal, Through Water is more explicitly political, no more so than on the opening title track, which addresses the climate crisis via quotes made from a speech by her water engineer father. The standout recent single Womxn, meanwhile, tackles female self-confidence via a gloriously uplifting hook. “I look, I breathe, I feel like a woman”. She saves the most affecting song for last, Speaking of the End making its mark with just understated piano and her unadorned voice.