LILY ALLEN • West End Girl • LP/CD • Pre-Order

Lily Allen returns more vibrant and more essential than ever. She returns with West End Girl, her long-awaited fifth studio album. Written and recorded over an intense 10-day period, blending raw honesty with infectious pop craftsmanship, documenting elements of her time in New York with piercing clarity and insight. Here, Allen trades in diverse, playful soundscapes for woozy and cinematic compositions that emphasize her brutal lyrical revelations.

The title track sets the scene: Allen has uprooted her life for a picture perfect romance in New York City. But it doesn’t last. A career opportunity creates tension and resentment in the relationship, and she ends up back in London, alone. The tracks that follow are a devastating, detailed look at her deteriorating relationship and dating in the aftermath. On “Pussy Palace,” she has the realization that a second apartment was the destination for her partner’s clandestine sexcapades.

“I found a shoebox full of handwritten letters/ From brokenhearted women wishing you could have been better,” goes one line. On “Madeline,” she confronts a mistress that’s overstepped the boundaries she set for her relationship (“We had an arrangement/ Be discrete and don’t be blatant”), unable to discern if either her partner or the other woman is telling any truth. “I can’t trust anything that comes out of your mouth,” she sings over acoustic strums and castanets. The following line is one of the album’s most striking moments: “I’m not convinced that he didn’t fuck you in our house.”

For some, October is unofficially the beginning of cuffing season. But Allen has created an album for the rest of the population that has to reconcile with toxic cycles, breaking bad habits, and being honest with yourself. It’s swift and weightless despite the jaw-dropping details. There’s the trip-poppy waltz of “Sleepwalking,” the womping dub of “Beg For Me” that interpolates the 2003 dancehall hit “Never Leave You (Uh Oooh, Uh Oooh),” and the immediate album highlight “Relapse.” Whether literal or not, it’s heartbreaking to hear these scenarios and anxieties but it’s thrilling to see Allen back at the top of her game.