As Kelora, Kitty Hall and Benedict Salter craft gothic cyberfolk that speaks to the sick Victorian child dwelling within us all. The London-based Glaswegian duo’s solemn atmospheres balance gauzy acoustic guitars and lacy melodies that sound as if they’ve been resurrected from a malfunctioning music box. Their lyrical world is replete with the wistfulness of sunsets, the vitality and vibrancy of blood, and an ambivalence, sometimes indifference, to death—the kind of world where strangers meet and fall into a casually morose and existential conversation. “A lonely visitor walks with the tide/‘Hello there, do you want to die?’” Hall sings on “Fake Future,” from their 2023 debut Gloomerald. “‘No, I’m just trying hard to pass the time,’” she continues. Kelora’s spectral music creates momentum by disarming and softening melancholy; that progress is sometimes entrancing, sometimes lethargic.
Their latest album, Sleepers, furthers this obsession with disorienting tension, filled with references to sleep, dreams, and the semi-conscious states where reality blurs. Despite Hall’s sweet, whispery coos and the songs’ lullaby qualities, any moment of shuteye is followed by a heavy unease. “We’ll fall asleep and learn/I dreamed I saw the palace burn/We’re going where we won’t return,” she sings on “Bluebells.” For Kelora, sleep becomes a reminder of life’s impermanence. “I fell asleep in Glasgow/in 2025/Nothing ever lasts but/you’ve gotta survive,” goes a line on “In A Million Streams.”
Sleepers is more ambitious than its predecessor, Gloomerald, working harder to charm the listener into an inescapable labyrinth. The percussion tinkers and creeps. Backing vocals expand and shift like glowing orbs. The duo’s signature acoustic guitars feel like a heated blanket under the chill of Halls’ voice, which barely rises above a whisper. Where Gloomerald was limited to hushed tones and Elliott Smith-esque strums, Sleepers is filled with electronic manipulations that evoke hallucinatory memories. When the chorus comes on “When the Floods Come, You’ll Be an Island,” a warped operatic sample pierces through, like a possessed gramophone, only to be eclipsed by waves of Hall’s shimmering vocals, as if to convince us the moment was just our imagination.
On the surface, Kelora’s gossamer embrace is innocent enough—like a child ghost passing eternity in a pre-war apartment. But while entertaining a poltergeist might be thrilling, it’s also draining, slowly sucking away your life force. On the singsongy “Aura,” they sing a resounding lyric in a hurried tone: “The darkness is sublime but don’t let the dreams bury you.” It’s a hushed warning before the chorus: “We don’t understand what it means,” a candid admission that feels like a sweet surrender after wading through songs with so much uncertainty. Sleepers is a misery-loves-company album that romanticizes moments of gloomy depression, rather than chasing away the darkness by letting in the light. Kelora’s music underscores that embracing bleakness, in measured doses, can be a unique comfort—which, depending on your mood, can feel like an indulgent luxury or a brooding endurance test.
