Trip9love…???

Sparse, strange, and stubbornly intimate, trip9love…??? feels less like an album and more like an open wound being gently prodded. Surprise-released with no lead singles and barely a whisper of promotion, Tirzah’s third full-length is an act of quiet defiance, eschewing pop conventions in favour of minimalism, repetition, and rawness. What emerges is a record that bruises slowly, and stays sore.

Created over the course of a year in home studios with long-time collaborator Mica Levi, trip9love…??? strips things right back. Almost every track circles around the same lurching drum machine loop, refracted through distortion, decay, or hiss. Piano anchors the compositions—a ghostly, mournful presence set against glitchy, confrontational beats. The consistency is startling at first, almost frustrating. But as the record unfolds, the repetition becomes a kind of hypnosis; a container for Tirzah’s quiet storm of emotion.

There are moments where it feels like the whole thing might fall apart… a cracked vocal here, a jarring chord there… but that’s the beauty of it. As ever, Tirzah embraces imperfection. Her delivery is fragile, unadorned, barely whispered at times. Levi’s production never overwhelms, leaving space for breath and tension to build. Critics have called it tender, immaculately broken, aching—and they’re right. But it’s also fiercely deliberate. Every off-kilter choice feels intentional.

trip9love…??? is not an easy record. It demands patience, asks for replay after replay. But in its minimalism and monotony lies something quietly radical—a portrait of love, pain, and selfhood told in smudged sketches rather than broad strokes. You don’t just listen to it. You sit with it. Press on it. Let it throb.