Be the Doll begins with "Duality," a fitting first track title for an album that lands both soft and strong. Dahlia Knowles' second album as Lorelei K takes her pain and turns it into catchy pop songs. Don't mistake the pop genre classification for a signal of vapidity - the album is full of charming soundscapes wrapped around aching poetry.

Knowles' battle with dysphoria in the past year is bared in her lyricism. Writing and recording Be the Doll turned out to be a rewarding process for her self-expression. Knowles said "It allowed my to let go of some older version of myself that no longer served me."

The second Lorelei K album went through a different process than her debut album Holy Holding, this time Knowles collaborated with Michael Briggs and Parker Lawson. Briggs had creative input as producer and created all the beats. Lawson then performed various instrumentation.

The standout track from Be the Doll is "Hands" which could be perceived as a subversive take on a lounge singer's yearning for love mixed with self-doubt. It's catchy while also being haunting as perhaps love and longing always seem to be. The lyrics begin "I said I love you / and then I said I didn't mean it / but oh how I meant it / and surely I do mean it." 

"Each song on this album seems to have its own sort of genre or styling, because I felt like there was an element of impulse while recording," said Knowles. "It was all so limitless and unapologetically dramatic."

Be the Doll is poetry painted with contrasting colors. We're seeing Lorelei K calmly bursting from a chrysalis into an artist that is releasing beautiful music with a willingness to be vulnerable.

Header image courtesy of Lorelei K
Header image layout designed by Holden Foster