Posted: by The Alt Editing Staff
Bel’s new album, Licorice, is a project built with intention, care, and a kind of tenderness that comes from someone who has done some hard personal work before stepping into the studio. From the first listen, it struck me as a record shaped by honesty. When I spoke with Isabel Furman to talk through the songs, I realized how deeply her life, her relationships, and her sense of growth are woven into every detail.
Isabel told me that Licorice did not start out as a full album: “I wrote ‘No More Time,’ ‘Licorice,’ ‘Lost Light,’ and ‘Patience’ first, for what I thought would be a four-track EP. Something didn’t quite click.” At that point I asked what changed. She said, “It wasn’t until I wrote ‘Lasting’ that the whole record came together, and I understood what I was trying to say.” She pointed to the line “Lasting at all is magic, but lasting this long is asking for it” as the phrase that unlocked everything. That question of how to hold gratitude while acknowledging the risk of loss becomes the emotional backbone of the album.
What follows is a record filled with circling motifs, repeated emotional truths, and musical choices that fold into one another like chapters in the same diary. Let’s break it down.
The album opens with synth haze, filtered phone vocals, and a playful yet uneasy undercurrent. The band introduces a small melodic idea that reappears throughout the record, tying the songs together. When Bel sings, “it’s you I need to fill with,” it paints a picture of someone stuck in a domestic swirl of thoughts. Layered vocals loop around themselves, capturing that sense of circling.
When I asked Isabel about the album’s use of layering to build upon the emotion she is conveying, she shared one of her favorite details from the whole project: “Eli and I were feeling stuck about how to build texture. I was telling him how I wrote the song about sitting around and waiting, and he had the idea to record myself scrolling through TikTok. It was around the time of the 2020 election, so you can very faintly hear a video of Kamala Harris in the background, which always makes me giggle and cringe.” It sets the tone for the album: real, unfiltered, and touched by the world around her.
The first single the band put out in August, “Canadian Tuxedo” pulls you in with anthemic energy. Eli’s guitar lifts the track with a folky undercurrent throughout the song, and the bass line, played by both Bel and Eli throughout the album, bubbles beneath the lyrics adding momentum. The chorus, “I like it when you call me tough and talk soft,” feels like a celebration of trust. The band sounds linked, as if the song itself is built on collaboration and the love that shapes it.
“Lasting” starts with doubled vocals that echo like a quiet thought. The line, “We made a great life with our limited choice” carries both gratitude and reflection. Bel acknowledges past turmoil, feeling “torn between wrecking a car and riding shotgun,” yet the song stays hopeful. A gentle breakbeat pulses under the surface before the band bursts back in with warmth. Knowing this is the magic key that unlocked the album gives each moment a deeper glow.
“Patience” moves with a glowing steadiness, carried by chorus-washed guitar and gentle synth that shimmer beneath Bel’s voice. The song sits in a lilting pulse that feels almost meditative, yet the emotion is bold. When she sings “Patience is a vengeful god,” it lands as a recognition of how long she waited to feel safe, loved, and seen. This track is a victory lap. Bel stands above whatever, or whomever, once held her back, and she sings from a place of earned clarity.
The production opens up as the song progresses, growing in color and texture, and the final line, “I don’t think I am the monster you make me,” arrives not as protest but as affirmation. She no longer carries the weight of someone else’s narrative. She has risen into a life that supports her, and this track honors that ascent.
A ticking clock gives the track an eerie and domestic heartbeat, picked guitar keeps things raw and open, Bel sings, “I am falling into my old habits again,” and it feels like a declaration, not a question. It is a clear recognition of a pattern she fears returning to. This thread of honesty runs through the whole album. She follows it with “I widen at the irises, I am letting all the lost light in,” which adds a gentle hopefulness. The band sweeps in, the clock continues ticking, and the whole song stands between fear and possibility.
“Rum and Coke” hits in waves. It begins like a bedroom confession, soft and close. Isabel mentioned that it was a song that she second guessed even adding on the album. “It’s about an experience that I can’t really talk about,” she explained, “and the song is actually kind of about not talking about that thing.” A fun fact about this track is that the “oops!” sound in the recording came from Isabel dropping her phone while switching a notebook page during the demo. They decided to keep it. They also kept a background vocal take where Eli made her laugh. Isabel explains, “It symbolizes the origins of the song. This is me, in my room, confessing something into my phone. It reminds me that there’s lightness in the grief. Being a little unserious helps make the processing easier.”
Halfway through, the track expands into a theatrical arrangement as the lyrics swell. The line, “the curtain reveals a haunted house on a stage,” introduces a reverb in the vocals like a troubled flashback. After that declaration, added playful “do do do”s call back to the opening track’s melodic motif, and the harmonies act as a support system to the lead melody that sound like community. In the background, a glockenspiel rings like a tiny reminder of play despite the weighty content. The story folds back to the line, “I talked about you once,” creating a circle that feels intentional and tender.
If “Rum and Coke” touches on the feelings of grief and sorrow, “Walking Wound” is the rage that follows. Crunchy guitar and driving percussion create a kinetic energy. With a punchy attitude, Bel sings, “Is it unfeeling or feeling less / How can I tell it from happiness?” and it lands like someone pushing through an emotional fog. Throughout this song, nature imagery flashes quick and sharp, touching on destruction and regrowth in nature, in life, and in love. It feels like absolution.
Licorice closes out with a soundscape of tape rewinding and shimmering synth before adding stripped acoustic guitar. The album’s second single, “No More Time,” has the warm glow of early 2000s coming-of-age power pop. Bel’s refrain, “no more time in this frictionless place / I wanna make something last and you’re my best bet, babe,” feels like a return to solid ground. The melodic motif reappears one last time, tying the album into a full circle. The final chords remain unresolved, like a cliffhanger, a not so quiet hint that there is more ahead.
When I asked Isabel what she hoped to express with this album, she told me, “I’ve tried to find more nuance in my music. Instead of just writing about heartbreak, I’m trying to write about jealousy and existentialism and co-dependency and all of the nuanced and complicated feelings that come with being in love.” That complexity shows in every track.
What stays with me most is the unity of this project: the recurring melodies, the repeated emotional shapes, the sense of circling and returning. Bel often snaps herself (and by effect, the audience) back into reality. The band’s musicianship, lyrical composition, poetic phrasing both music and structural, speaks to the thoughtfulness of the project, the catharsis after the build up. Though, nothing feels accidental. Every detail feels considered. Every emotion feels earned. The fact that so much of it was composed and recorded in her bedroom says everything about the talent that Isabel and Eli bring to the table as bandmates, as producers, and as siblings. They are a powerhouse.
Licorice ends on an unresolved chord, but the project itself feels complete in its honesty. It is warm, thoughtful, and deeply human, and it leaves you with the feeling that this is only the beginning of what the Bel is capable of.
Licorice is out now.
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Mol White | @molemanmedia
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