HER SHADOW CROWN | INTERVIEW + ALBUM REVIEW

Her Shadow Crown is a Melbourne duo built on quiet risk. Lida (songwriter, vocalist) and Alex (producer) are creative and life partners who make music that treats memory as a raw material, spinning past selves and childhood images into songs that shimmer with vintage pop textures. Lida writes toward younger versions of herself that were never fully understood or given a place, and Alex translates the emotional centre of each song into arrangement, texture and sound in a way that lands somewhere neither of them could have reached alone. What comes out sounds like it's been rescued from a drawer of forgotten films, warm even at its most melancholy.

Obscura is the record they've built out of that shared instinct. Twelve tracks that move through childhood memories, mirrors, conversations with past selves, and the space between illusion and reality. The album begins from a very personal perspective and travels through longing, disappointment, reflection and inner contradiction before arriving at something like peace and freedom in the final track. It pulls together 60s psychedelic pop, 80s Brit-pop, Yé-yé textures, Alice in Wonderland, The Little Prince, Carl Jung and The Velvet Underground into something both nostalgic and specifically theirs. In the interview below Lida talks about writing "her" as a way of writing about herself, why metaphor lets honesty out without full exposure, the Jungian idea of the masculine within a woman that she came to gently through the writing process, and what she hopes a listener discovering Obscura in twenty years might feel from the woman dancing alone at the end of it all.

ALBUM REVIEW - Obscura

Opening with “Strawberry Memories,” Obscura immediately sets the tone. It pulled me into the right mood from the beginning and made me want to dive deeper into the album.

By the second track, a melancholic yet strangely joyful vocal is accompanied by a beautiful, lightly played organ. Its chorus is particularly strong. As the album continues, it begins to feel like a surf-rock adventure, driven by poetic chord progressions that resolve naturally into each new section and keep the journey interesting.

The guitar tones are outstanding, and the effects pedals are certainly being put through their paces. More importantly, Obscura genuinely has a sound of its own. I listen to a lot of music, and it’s rare to hear this kind of uniqueness shine through so clearly. The vocals occasionally remind me of Kate Miller-Heidke with a touch of Men I Trust, but they never feel like an imitation.

The album sounds futuristic while still tipping its hat to influences from across the past 20 years. At times, it feels like stepping into a sci-fi disco; elsewhere, it becomes intimate and delicate. I particularly love the tenderness of “Animus.” The record moves through these contrasts with wonderful ebbs and flows.

When I reached “All That I Want,” I was taken back to Madness. There’s something about its driving rhythm and the way the other instruments wrap around it that carries a similar energy. Then the final track leaves you sitting in a park somewhere, quietly taking everything in.

The guitar work throughout is brilliant—I know I keep returning to it, but it really is one of the album’s defining strengths. What I admire most, however, is the balance. Every instrument is given room to contribute, and nothing ever tries to overpower the rest.

Obscura is distinctive, carefully arranged and full of unexpected turns. I’m already excited to hear where Her Shadow Crown goes next.

Obscura opens like stepping into a fairytale and closes with someone dancing alone, untouched by judgment. What was the emotional arc you needed the album to travel across those twelve tracks?

In the beginning there wasn't a fixed storyline in mind, but as the songs came together, certain themes kept returning such as childhood memories, mirrors, conversations with past versions of myself, and the space between illusion and reality.

The album begins from a very personal perspective, then moves through longing, disappointment, reflection and inner contradiction. By the final track, I hoped it might reach a kind of peace and freedom.

So many of these songs are about looking back at younger versions of yourself, whether it's Chuchelo II, May, or Playground Broken Heart. What did you learn about who you used to be by writing to her?

While writing these songs, I realised that I kept returning to childhood and personal growth as recurring themes. As the songs accumulated, I could see that I was revisiting emotions that had never been fully understood or given a proper place.

By returning to them through music, I was slowly able to untangle some of those feelings. I came to understand her circumstances more clearly, and to accept the younger, sometimes immature and sensitive version of myself who was already doing her best to understand the world.

On The Second Planet you say you wrote "her" but you were really writing about yourself. Is disguise the only way some truths can be told, or is it a way of protecting yourself from what you're admitting?

I think it can be difficult to admit to vanity, or to the very human desire to be seen. Some truths can feel quite exposing when they are expressed too directly, and perhaps a little embarrassing as well.

That is part of what I find so appealing about metaphor. It can help us say something honest without placing ourselves completely under a spotlight. The "her" in The Second Planet gave me a little distance, allowing me to observe the character gently before recognising that her desires and contradictions were also part of me.

The album pulls together 60s psychedelic pop, 80s Brit-pop, Yé-yé, Alice in Wonderland, The Little Prince, Carl Jung, and The Velvet Underground. That's a rich list of influences. Do you think collecting things from other eras is a way of building a home that doesn't quite exist yet?

I think it may be, although it is also something I still wonder about myself. My music has always been difficult to place completely within one era or one clear style. (Even choosing genre categories when releasing music on streaming platforms can sometimes feel surprisingly difficult)

At the same time, all of these influences are there to serve the themes I am trying to express. Music, literature and visual ideas from different periods give me different ways of approaching the same subject. Perhaps that "home" does not belong to any particular era. It is simply a space of our own, gently built from different languages, memories and points of view.

Looking Glass keeps asking who is on your mind when you look back. When you finish an album this personal and start hearing it played back in rooms full of strangers, do those questions land differently?

I do not think the questions themselves have changed very much for me. They still come from the memories and emotions that were present when I first wrote the song.

At the same time, I understand that once a work enters the public world, it may begin to resonate with people I have never met. Someone else may recognise a similar kind of longing, loss or uncertainty in it which might allow the song to hold other people's memories alongside my own. I think that is a very natural and lovely part of sharing something personal.

Working with Alex as producer means every emotional decision you make as a songwriter has to survive translation into sound. How do you two navigate the space between the song in your head and the song on tape?

I usually begin with the emotional centre of a song: a melody, chord progression, lyric, rhythm or particular atmosphere. I often know quite clearly how I would like it to feel, even when I cannot yet explain every production detail.

Alex is very good at translating those impressions into arrangement, texture and sound. We do not always arrive at the same solution straight away, and sometimes it helps to step back and return with clearer ears. Over time, we have learned that those differences can be very useful. The finished song is often something neither of us would have reached alone, and that is one of the things I value most about working together.

Animus draws on Jung's idea of the masculine within a woman. Was there a specific reflection or realisation that pushed you to write about that inner counterpart rather than something more external?

The song grew from a gradual realisation that the way we see other people or situations can sometimes point back towards something deeper within ourselves. When we judge or interpret someone else, those reactions may also reveal a part of our own inner world.

This connects with the childhood memories that return throughout the album. I think I kept revisiting them because some emotions had never been fully understood or given a place. Through Animus, I began to recognise how certain feelings had been projected outward, and to gently bring them back towards myself. Writing the song helped me make a little more sense of emotions that had been present for a long time, but had been difficult to name directly.

Melbourne has its own tradition of indie pop that leans into introspection and craft over immediacy. Do you feel like Her Shadow Crown is in dialogue with that lineage, or moving somewhere else entirely?

Living and making music in Melbourne inevitably shapes us, although we have never consciously tried to place Her Shadow Crown within a particular local lineage.

What I appreciate in much of Melbourne's independent music is the space it gives to individuality, thoughtful songwriting and ideas that do not need to reveal themselves immediately. That feels quite close to the way we work. At the same time, our influences come from many different eras and places, so perhaps we are both in conversation with the city around us and quietly building a small musical world of our own beside it.

Mirage closes with the Velvet Underground nod, tomorrow's parties dissolving in your eyes. Do you think a certain amount of illusion is necessary to keep making art, or does the mirage always have to break eventually?

I think some form of illusion is necessary for making art. One has to believe in something before it fully exists, whether it's a song, a record, or the possibility that it may eventually reach another person.

That belief can resemble a mirage because the destination often changes as you move towards it. Some illusions may need to fall away when they stop us from seeing reality clearly. One mirage may dissolve while another possibility begins to form. Without imagining of what is not yet present, it would be very difficult to keep creating.

If someone new finds Obscura in twenty years without knowing anything about you, what do you hope they take away from the woman who danced to whatever was played?

The woman dancing alone represents a state of being that I hope to grow towards. She is self-accepting, peaceful and quietly confident, neither carried away by praise nor easily shaken by criticism.

She might not have solved certain questions or removed certain contradiction. She has simply become more at ease within her own inner world, without allowing every outside judgment to decide her next step.

If someone discovers Obscura in twenty years, I hope they can feel that kind of freedom in her.

LISTEN HERE · SOCIALS X LINKS