an English singer-songwriter known for her distinctive voice, emotional immediacy and timeless songwriting craft.

If the name Alice Gold feels familiar, then it’s for good reason. First coming to prominence at the turn of the 2010s with Ones to Watch nods from The Guardian, Q Magazine and more, her Dan Carey-produced debut Seven Rainbows landed in 2011, propelling Gold to an opening slot on Glastonbury’s Other Stage and support tours alongside Eels and Noah and the Whale. BBC Music hailed the record as “transcend[ing] any accepted conventions of ‘female singer-songwriter’, to lay the foundations for a rock star”; the following year she provided guest vocals on Sub Focus’s UK Top 20 hit ‘Out Of The Blue’. Everything seemed on track – and then she disappeared.

Behind the scenes, Gold’s personal life had begun to require her full attention. Seven Rainbows was written in the wake of her mother’s death. Then, as she and her husband prepared to start their own family, Gold was diagnosed with severe hip dysplasia. Within two years, she was plunged into motherhood without a mum and underwent two major operations, relearning to walk for months each time.

“I was probably the most fragile I’ve ever been,” she reflects. “I wasn’t creating, I wasn’t wanting to write, so I thought, ‘OK, that chapter’s gone.’”

For years, music – the medium she’d used to process the world since she was eight – ceased to be part of her life. But slowly, the songs returned. When Gold and her family relocated from London to her ancestral home of Kent during Covid, putting down roots reignited something further.

Over the following years Gold began making Faultlines – her second album, arriving 15 years and an emotional lifetime after its predecessor. Where Seven Rainbows flirted with ’60s sonics and French psychedelia, Faultlines strips things back. “This is just me,” Gold says. “It’s more laid-back. It’s more earthy. There are fewer layers.” Old friend Dan Carey returned as a guiding hand, helping with demos and lending his South London studio and engineer Alexis Smith to mix the project, but for the most part Gold helmed the album herself, producing it and recording alongside a live band in analogue takes.

Drawing on Elliott Smith, Stereolab and Joni Mitchell, Faultlines is Gold’s most intimate work yet. Written between jobs, parenting and nocturnal flurries of inspiration, its songs explore the everyday resilience of family life against a wider backdrop of Covid, war, AI, climate change and uncertainty. ‘Edge Of Reckoning’ is a call for empathy amid the noise, while the fingerpicked ‘Both Hands’ pictures “a world upside down and spinning somersaults”, searching for trust rather than fear. Elsewhere, ‘Yes’, ‘Night Flight’, ‘Take Our Time’ and closing track ‘Lifeline’ turn towards resilience, relationships and the people who keep us standing.

Fifteen years after Seven Rainbows, Faultlines isn’t so much a comeback as an artist returning with a deeper understanding of why she makes music. Tender, earthy and quietly hopeful, it finds strength in vulnerability and connection in uncertain times.

Alice Gold has gone through extreme highs and lows throughout her career, but the tenderness and vulnerability of Faultlines speaks volumes about the way she wants to see the world. Yes, it can be tough. Yes, life can throw you curveball after curveball. But with a little love and perseverance, Faultlines provides a soundtrack to make it out the other side.