Ian Sweet Finds a Surer Footing on ‘Shiverstruck’

Ian Sweet’s previous records never lacked skill, but they often gave off the faint unease of an artist still trying on voices. Shiverstruck, the fifth album from Jilian Medford’s project, is not a sonic overhaul. It works with familiar materials—fuzzy guitars, synth washes, a voice that twists from whisper to wail—but the difference is in the posture. The uncertainty is gone, replaced by songs that know what they are.

The album moves with a coherent energy, from the sparse, self-lacerating opener “987” to the closing charge of “Speed Demon,” where Medford throws out the line “Fuck the speed limit” like someone done apologising. In between, the writing is direct and often diaristic, without turning inward to the point of obscurity. On “Deadweight,” a bright, hook-filled track about depression, she shrugs, “I never make my bed, too busy laying in it.” It lands because it’s precise, not theatrical.

The centrepiece is “Jilian,” named for Medford’s offstage self. Over a mid-tempo rock arrangement, she catalogues her own evasions: “Go on and tell them that you’re sick of it / Sad singer, such a hypocrite.” It’s the sound of a songwriter who has stopped performing vulnerability and started wielding it. Even the love songs, like the crush-drunk “Criminal Kissing” or the nervy “La La Love,” hold a clear-eyed awareness that longing comes with a cost.

Shiverstruck doesn’t chase trends, and it doesn’t beg for approval. It documents the quiet, late-arriving self-trust that comes after years of trying on different skins. For Medford, that arrival is more compelling than any stylistic left turn.