Lolli Wren Turns Existential Dread Into Avant-Pop Theatre In ‘are we alright?’

There is something deliciously unsettling about asking “are we alright?” in 2026. London avant-pop artist Lolli Wren takes that deceptively casual question and stretches it into a cinematic meditation on doomscrolling, urban isolation and the peculiar loneliness of being permanently connected. Her latest single, ‘are we alright?’, inhabits that uncomfortable space between pop song and psychological theatre, where contemporary anxiety is given a dramatic costume and invited onto the stage.

Wren has the vocal arsenal to make the drama suitably extravagant. With a range spanning more than four octaves, she treats her voice less like a single instrument and more like an ensemble, moving between distortion, agility and intricate layers. Every backing vocal on the track was written and performed by Wren herself, creating a kaleidoscopic chorus that seems to multiply around the listener. It is technically impressive, certainly, but more importantly, it gives the song its sense of character.

The influence of the 1988 cult science-fiction film They Live adds another deliciously paranoid layer. Like the film, Wren's world suggests that something is lurking underneath the familiar, although here the hidden menace feels decidedly contemporary. The endless feed, the anonymous city, the pressure to keep functioning and the creeping suspicion that everyone else is coping better than you are become part of her dystopian palette. Eduardo Moreira's production and instrumentation give the song its cinematic frame, while Barry O'Connell's mixing and mastering help maintain its scale.

Yet beneath the darkness is an unexpectedly generous gesture. Wren has described the song as an attempt to reach people caught in the same cycle of existential dread, making ‘are we alright?’ less a diagnosis than a hand extended through the static. It follows her 2024 debut album To Build A Sea and further establishes an artist who understands that pop can be theatrical without becoming superficial, experimental without becoming inaccessible, and strange without losing its humanity.

Instagram | Spotify | Website | PR: Danielle Holian, Decent Music PR