Hannah Rodgers returns with a new Pixx album, Small Mercies, released on 4AD. Although love lives at the heart of her second album, it has little to do with romance. Small Mercies is absolutely not a heartbreak record, nor is it a celebration of new love, or sisterly call-to-arms or vengeful catharsis. Instead, it is a series of poetic examinations of love across the experiential spectrum, from the micro (self-love) to the macro (devotional faith-inspired love, love for this planet), set to a soundtrack that mixes electronic pop and grungy guitar rock with aplomb. Small Mercies follows the 23 year-old’s debut album, The Age Of Anxiety (2017) – an unsettling synth-pop record fuelled by Pixx’s own debilitating experience of angst – and 2015’s forlorn and folk-edged Fall In EP. Co-produced by Simon Byrt (who worked on both her EP and debut album) and Dan Carey, it sees Pixx assuming different personas to examine the damage done by religion, gender-based power hierarchies and stereotypes, the tipping point of Earth’s destruction and love
