Meet lilo, the folk duo writing odes to friendship

The songs on Blood Ties, the debut album from London-via-Winchester duo lilo, are best heard as conversations.

The pair – Christie Gardner and Helen Dixon – sing to and for each other across the album, giving soft nudges in the right direction as they both battled a summer of breakups and upheaval.

“I am so angry on behalf of you,” Gardner sings in solidarity with her friend and bandmate on opening track ‘Crash the Car’, a striking recount of the despair immediately after Dixon’s breakup. As the chorus soars to an emotional climax, Gardner sings: “I hope he never gets to have another good time.”

Meeting at secondary school in Winchester a decade ago, Gardner and Dixon discovered a unique and strong musical chemistry. Since, they have grown alongside each other both personally and musically. It’s shown on Blood Ties, a record that honours their stripped-back folk roots while expanding into thunderous blasts of noise.

Watch the video for ‘Crash the Car’ and read our Play Next interview with lilo, where they discuss the evolution of their musical bond, the narrative threads of Blood Ties and more, below.

What is it like to have each other to bounce your fears and worries off each other through the prism of songs and lyrics?

Dixon: It’s pretty fundamental to it. We had one summer where Christie and I and also our bassist Kitty all went through these simultaneous, quite tumultuous breakups. At the same time, we were playing the funniest shows. There was such a manic energy to us, but it absolutely saved me, to be honest. It made the whole thing from something that could have been absolutely awful into something that was kind of quite funny and often a good time, even though it was really hard.

Gardner: One thing that I personally find interesting about the album, in terms of the writing, is us writing about each other’s experiences as well. That has been really pivotal to where certain songs have taken directions with different perspective. It’s very much one journey, even though it’s two people.

Is the story of Blood Ties one of helping each other come to terms with these things, and then be at peace with them?

Gardner: ‘Crash the Car’ at the beginning and ‘Always In Time’ at the end are two sides of the same situation and two feelings about the same situation. One of them is extremely angry and not thinking, it’s just wanting to die straight up. The other one is very much a letting go, where you’re at peace with this feeling and it’s far more thoughtful.

How does writing so openly to and about each other in your songs affect how you interact as friends outside of the band?

Dixon: Sometimes it opens up a conversation. I might think Christie’s feeling a certain way, and then she’ll write a song and I’ll say, ‘That is how you’re feeling! I knew it!’

Gardner: It does really facilitate things. Our producer will ask what the song is about, and we have to go, ‘Uh…’

Dixon: It’s a therapy session!

Gardner: The song ‘Blood Ties’, Helen wrote in response to a song that I wrote after I explained what it was about during a session.

Dixon: It’s a musical conversation, as well as a regular conversation too.

Gardner: We talked more because of it though. You can’t say, ‘Here are all of my feelings in a song!’ and then say, ‘But we can never talk about any of them!’ That’d be a weird foundation to build a band on.

How would you describe the evolution of your sound, as well as your emotional bond and lyrical styles?

Gardner: We had a big graph with four axes on it. Almost an emotional graph that then attributed sounds to those emotions.

Dixon: We put all our demos on it and gave them labels.

Gardner ‘Sparkly nice!’ ‘Crashy moody!’ It was like a 13-year-old naming their Puffles on Club Penguin! That was our version of finding a sound.

Dixon: It was really useful, in a slightly clinical way. It literally, on a piece of paper, defined the paramaters of the sound.

Gardner: The one thing that would always ground our sound was our two voices together.

Does one of you push a bit more ‘sparkly nice’, while the other is more ‘crashy moody’?

Dixon: Generally, I’m like, ‘Make it louder!’ and Christie’s more, ‘Hang on a minute, that’s too loud’. I don’t know where to stop and want it bigger and bigger.

Gardner: We swapped roles though. When we were younger, I wanted it to all be different and you were more concerned with losing who we were inherently. Then I don’t know what happened – maybe we were in some kind of Freaky Friday accident – but we just swapped.

Is the reason you started the band still the driving force of lilo now?

Dixon: Yeah. It was born of friendship and still exists because of friendship now.

Gardner: It will always be something that we do for fun, to understand each other and to have a nice time.