Chloe Davidson

Chloe Davidson’s ‘This Is Our Garden’ is an intimate and expansive sophomore record: rooted in Davidson’s inimitable and introspective songwriting voice, and radiating outwards with warm, invitational kindness.

Throughout its eleven tracks, the powerful duality of Davidson’s arrangement talents are on full display: whispered, intimate mantras (‘Night Sparrow, ‘On a Quiet Day’) blossom into multi-layered, overlapping jubilant harmonies (‘Away’, ‘What Do We Do’); atmospheric meditations (‘Almost There’, ‘I Will Not be Dimmed’) fold into angular, playful celebrations of self and community (‘Hold It Together’, ‘This is Our Garden’). Paired again with producer Andrew Judah, Davidson’s sense of melodic storytelling—both vocally, and with her trademark, virtuosic violin-playing—is given room to soar, inspire, and perhaps even defy understanding: “these melodies, well, they’re an honest mystery”, Chloe muses to herself on album highlight ‘All of This’. 

Expanding the already diverse musical universe contained in her debut ‘Your Turn to Go’ (2022), ‘This is Our Garden’ paints itself in even broader and distinct hues: at times, presenting as highly-saturated and bombastic, featuring both jangly instrumental passages, and angular, excited rhythmic pulses. Other times, Davidson’s sonic colour becomes mutedly complex and sombre: sparse and dark; defiant, quiet, and perfectly composed. 

At once a protest and prayer, ‘This is Our Garden’ creates deliberate space for grief, joy, and mystery to co-exist without resolution: Davidson vulnerably explores her own self-actualization (“I’m beginning to believe in myself”), asks of herself to sing a better existence into being (“no more waiting for a world we’re creating”), and invites the listener to cultivate that world with her (“‘cause we’ve got power, more than we know”).