Kids With Buns look through a ‘bell jar’ on new album
On their second album, ‘bell jar’, Kids With Buns take you on a journey through the erratic, recurring patterns of heartbreak, mental struggles and personal growth. Inspired by Sylvia Plath’s novel of the same name, Amber Piddington and Marie Van Uytvanck explore how healing rarely follows a straight path and how old wounds can reopen time and time again. Two simultaneous break-ups provided the fertile ground for a vulnerable and introspective album, on which the Belgian indie pop duo also break new musical ground. Together with producer Jacob Blizard, known for his work with Lucy Dacus, they give their signature sound a richer, more cinematic depth. The result is a poignant record about the many ways in which love can go wrong, but above all about the power of connection and the ability to start over again and again.
credit anneke d’hollander
Much of the album’s material was written during those spells of scrambling through the darkness. The grief of processing two simultaneous breakups vs. the joy of being two songwriters who compliment each other so very potently. It’s, in a way, its own cyclical process, one that kept two souls afloat when that larger cycle fractured.
One of the duo’s biggest growth spurts since Kids With Buns’ 2023 debut LP Out of Place has been honing a newly-hatched cinematic depth. “With this album, we just had a much clearer and stronger idea of how the songs should sound,” says Marie. “Not only arrangement-wise, but the production as well. The majority of this album materialised during writing sessions in Amber’s bedroom, right in the middle of our grieving process.”
A big catalyst in fleshing the songs out further was working with Lucy Dacus-producer Jacob Blizard, who they met at a festival in the Netherlands. After Jacob shot the duo a message to collaborate, before they knew it, Amber and Marie packed their bags to Philadelphia to record some of the demoed material with him. One of the first songs that materialised here was “The Finite”, a song that quite devastatingly captures Marie’s breakup in realtime. Right after, Marie literally stood at Amber’s front door and played the voice memo of the song to her.
bell jar is an album that holds an umbrella above this outpouring. It often comes down to seeing love’s potential existing within its curved shapes, and fighting for that potential to be actualised. That quest is often one beyond an individual’s control; the lovesick “Half Of A Dream” and the shrewdly-titled “Best Friends” orbit the epicenter of this painful falling out. “The whole album is about moments where love can fail,” says Marie. “All the possible things you run into, where things don't work out in love.”
Going through these volatile motions together, it mushroomed Amber and Marie’s love and appreciation for their remarkable chemistry; their innately joyous way of recouping each other’s blind spots, as well as amplifying their different strengths. It allowed Kids With Buns to fulfill the potential of the songs on bell jar, and come out stronger and wiser as people throughout its dizzying emotional journey.
