In following ambient music’s natural pull towards wistful feelings, Hadley Roe creates something tearjerkingly gorgeous

Real emotion can be something that many ambient artists purposely try to dampen. Sadness can be somewhat suffocating when a release is laden with it.

The genre, which presents striking and meaningful atmospheres using pads and carefully positioned bells by design, is so easily applicable to feelings of sorrow or sonder that many listeners will find themselves diverted into soaring euphoria as a way of not wallowing too much. Other artists might focus harder on atmospheric creation, situating the listener in believable surroundings in order to distract from the melancholic shroud that covers such sounds.

This is not so for Hadley Roe’s The Inner Garden, which pits the artist’s ongoing struggles with mental health at the very centre of its design, presenting personal reflection and unresolved pain with an unabashed yet professional poise.

This sadness takes many forms. It rumbles in the gracious and aptly grey-tinged Summer Rain, where hopeful but teary chords reach through a persistent downpour. The leaves of The Inner Garden the artist is welcoming us to weeping softly, warmed momentarily by cracks of sunlight in the form of glowing rays of piano.

It lingers in songs like No One Ever Touched Me Before You, shivering digitised bells laying a stark foundation for ghostly searching notes to sweep between.

The heartbreaking I Just Want To Get Better shares this penchant for iciness too, it’s crackling piano slowly cushioned by blooming euphoria. There are no painful punches pulled though. This is not closed-off emotion, but rather shared by the artist in unabashedly emotive musical prose. The longing chord progressions show a candid clarity. A contentedness within moments of solemn reserve.

The titular track shows Hadley Roe’s sadness in a more heartbreakingly open way than any other track, though. Echoed guitars resonate without defined form, like a loved one through a frosted window. A clean piano chants four notes, a loving but angst-ridden affirmation as surroundings flutter into ephemeral beauty. Hadley weighs sorrow and emotive happiness together so perfectly. Shivering vulnerability, reiterated as icy minor hollows are carved out of the great shrouds of euphoria.

The Inner Garden is a place of deeply felt melancholy, that much is clear from the strident nature with which Hadley Roe takes to painting these expressionist vistas. Far from shying away from it though, she champions her sorrow with prideful presentation, allowing it to wash over the listener. Wistful, difficult, but true.