With the eagerly-awaited second half of ‘Fragments in the Basement of My Mind’, La Leurentop looks to reframe the story that originally preceded it. If the earlier chapter felt like wandering through dim corridors, Side B stands in the doorway, eyes adjusting to light, ready to confront what was left unsaid.
There’s a sense of return throughout these tracks. Each song feels like a revisiting of earlier emotional spaces with sharpened awareness. Where doubt once lingered, there’s now clarity. It’s subtle but a powerful shift in stance.
Sonically, Side B feels expansive without losing its intimacy. Guitars rise with a controlled urgency, carrying an indie-folk backbone that grounds the more atmospheric flourishes. Swells of cinematic ambience hover around the edges, giving the songs a widescreen quality.
Tracks like ‘Hold On’ and ‘Queen’ hint at resilience without ever slipping into cliché. La’s vocal delivery carries a steady conviction, as though each line has been weighed before being spoken.
Lyrically, Side B examines identity and autonomy with piercing honesty. It’s about recognising inherited patterns and choosing not to live inside them. About stepping back into familiar emotional rooms and realising the furniture no longer fits. The writing balances abstraction with direct feeling, allowing us to project our own histories onto the canvas.
What’s most striking is how unvarnished it all feels. These recordings carry the texture of time, and in doing so, La Leurentop captures something layered, cyclical, and imperfect, but still utterly compelling.
Side B isn’t a triumphant finale, it’s a reminder that liberation often begins with perspective.
