There’s a hollow space surrounding the guitar solo on “Shiver,” an absorbent deep cut on the second studio album from British indie-pop darling Rachel Chinouriri. The production is both distant and overwhelming as it mirror the 27-year-old’s inner turmoil.
She’s feeling alone again, haunted by memories, and it’s like her words are vanishing into thin air before reaching anyone who will listen. Still, she sings, “Life goes on, and on, and on.” But what does she want that life to look like?
Chinouriri realizes she needs to make some changes on I Think I Spoke Too Soon. It’s reflected in the BPM spike across the record, a bold shift from her debut, 2024’s What a Devastating Turn of Events. She spends most of the album physically on the dance floor — sometimes the loneliest possible place no matter how crowded it may be — though mentally burrowed in her mind. But the biggest changes come as she reevaluates how she wants to be treated in all kinds of relationships, especially the one she has with herself.
Last we heard from Chinouriri, on 2025’s Little House EP, her world was awash with love, fantasizing about a future of slow Sundays and building a life out of the most mundane moments. There’s a glimpse of this on “AAAHHH!!!,” an indie-rock cut that is at once anxious and adoring, but mostly, Chinouriri is trying to close the gap between perceived truths — that she has the relationship, and the career, and whatever other combination of ingredients happiness can be crafted from — and the stubborn reality that she still feels woefully sad.
“I’ve got a thick skin, but the paper cuts still get in by the dozen,” Chinouriri sings on “Crash This Car” in a perfect summation of the record. On “Broken Chair,” Chinouriri splits herself in two to depict what drove her to sobriety. “Tell me what I’ve done, I can’t remember/As the better half, I can’t defend her,” she sings. “She’s throwing up into a gutter/It’s getting really hard to love her.” She circles this preoccupation across the album, appraising herself from afar. “She’s never looked better,” she observes on “One Song Away From Crying.” “She’s never felt worse.”
And yet, she’s never sounded better — her voice like silk, soft against the most abrasive revelations. Her writing carries a distinctly evolved candor, which is saying something for someone as willfully exposed as Chinouriri. “The Good Fight” is a career highlight, its hazy distortion scrambling thoughts of annoyance, regret, and self-destruction. “Do you like the way you can’t remember yesterday?” she asks. “Or do I like the taste of sickly bile and stomach pains?” Her instinct for concentrated confessions draws attention to the songs she dances around, like “Baby Steps” and “Pretty Girls.”
Still, Chinouriri doesn’t frame her synth-packed dance turn as a mere cover up for her sadness, loneliness, and despair. Even the biggest, most bombastic instrumentals — like the drum break on “Parasite” that channels Phil Collins — hold an innate melancholy to them. There’s no false incandescence as she sings, “If you didn’t love me then, love me now, just so I can feel it,” over trembling industrial production on “Make Believe.” I Think I Spoke Too Soon is fantastical, but never removed from reality.
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