Glass Eel’s “Amends” is a spellbinding reclamation of creative confidence

Alice Western re-engaged with her project Glass Eel after a period of creative distance. “Amends” emerges from a need to reset, reconnect, and find confidence in releasing music. As she puts it, “I'm really trying to no longer think about that and just trust my own musical instinct”.

This reset also meant stepping away from expectations she once felt to make louder, more rock-driven music. Instead, Western found herself returning to where she felt most at home: stripped-back, acoustic storytelling. “I always felt this pressure to make my music really loud, more rocky,” she says. “ But my first musical experiences were playing in a pub with my best friend, and we would like to do acoustic covers and sing harmonies. That's really, I think, where I feel really at home.”

Lyrically, “Amends” captures Western’s attempts to break free from mental loops. The kind that trap her in cycles of overthinking her creativity and output. Living with OCD, Western describes a tendency towards rumination – searching for signs, for certainty. The track reflects this internal tension “like a journey,” as she describes.

Western talks of her ambition to step into a psych-world for her track, which is a sidestep away from her previous release “The Line”. “[With ‘Amends’] I’m leaning in a sort of psychedelic rock mindset. I imagine that as a bunch of cartoon animals marching through the forest. I wanted it to feel quite magical and otherworldly.”

The sense of atmosphere isn’t accidental. Alongside music, Western is a sound engineer. This shines through in the scenic layering of sounds, “Amends” features the familiar folk trio – guitar, bass, drums – but Western and producers Margot Broom (Man/Woman/Chainsaw)and Seth Evans pushed the soundscape further. A shruti box, a hammond organ, and flutes, contribute to elevated textures. Western explains, “I like that kind of mixture of background and foreground, how you build almost like a world by thinking about that detail of what the person's being immersed in as they're listening”.

Western’s musical influences stretch from Aldous Harding to Joni Mitchell. She’s also a self-confessed Bob Dylan obsessive. With posters of The Bard once plastered on her teenage bedroom walls, her folk lineage is pretty easy to trace. But “Amends” feels like a step beyond folk, ultimately, it’s a portal into Glass Eel’s spellbinding world.