Review: Andrew Flynn – LOVE UNSPOKEN

Hartlepool singer-songwriter Andrew Flynn makes electropop with its heart very much on its sleeve. Beneath the club beats, layered production and sizeable vocals are songs that frequently venture into far less comfortable territory; heartbreak, manipulation, loneliness, recovery and the difficult business of learning to trust yourself again. His six-track debut EP LOVE UNSPOKEN brings together songs spanning a decade of Andrew’s life, including the most recently released single Love Arsonist, into a 23-minute journey that begins somewhere close to the dancefloor but certainly doesn’t end there.

‘Love Arsonist’ opens as though we have just pushed through the club doors. The beat arrives immediately, Andrew’s voice following with “your beauty swept me away”, already signalling that whatever happened here relates to the past. There is desperation, emotion and pain in his delivery, but increasingly something else too; the first suggestions of strength. As the opening chapter of LOVE UNSPOKEN, it lays out the groundwork of what is to come. Heartache and manipulation are part of this story, but this is no fairytale, and as Andrew has said previously, he has no intention of pretending otherwise.

Ghost 2.0 initially carries a fleeting suggestion of Depeche Mode before moving firmly back towards the dance beats. There is more control here, both musically and emotionally. “I’m the ghost in your room” and “You try to hold me close but I slip away” shift the balance, while “I’m just the mirror of the hearts you break” extends the song beyond self-protection into something almost empathetic towards those who might fall or have fallen under the same spell. Beneath it all, the electronics fizz and pulse, and Andrew’s vocals push against them with perhaps surprising force.

By Scrolling, the night has quietened, and our attention has shifted from the people around us to the anonymous glow of a phone screen, and the endless search for love, affection or simply connection. “TikTok famous… still feel unseen” is an acutely contemporary presentation of modern day loneliness, while “it’s all just pretend” cuts through the peculiar contradiction of being permanently connected or admired and yet somehow still alone. Is scrolling for love actually about finding it, or simply filling the space it left behind?

Then comes Burn. Far darker and increasingly cinematic, it feels like the solitary walk after the club, when distraction has gone and thoughts, self-reflection and perhaps judgement become more difficult to avoid. Andrew sings of slipping back towards destructive behaviours and wanting to surrender to the pain, with growing echoed and harmonised vocals enhancing those emotions. “Burn like a sunrise” offers the possibility of something quite ambiguous to the listener. What exactly needs burning here? Is it another person, the memory of them, or the voice inside that continues the damage long after they have gone? The theatricality builds until LOVE UNSPOKEN begins to feel less like six separate tracks and more like a truncated stage production.

Times opens another doorway off the street, although we’re certainly not returning to the same place we left. This is Andrew in reflective mode, acknowledging that life can be brutal and brilliant and that neither state lasts forever. “Find a way to seize the day” could easily become a cliché in less careful hands, but “times you remember you’re enough” grounds it in a much more sentimental and personal way. There is urgency here, but to stand, not to run away. Cinematic strings deepen the production, with long-held notes stretching Andrew’s vocals, turning the momentum to point forwards.

This then leaves the title track Love Unspoken to provide the EP’s natural climax. The transformation isn’t presented as a miraculously cleaned slate; the emergence of a being unscathed and triumphant. Instead, it feels closer to shedding something that no longer fits. “Time for love I can finally defend,” Andrew sings, before the particularly lovely “my quiet hope is my secret flame / still burning brightly without your name.” Fire, which began the EP as something destructive, appears to have changed its purpose.

Andrew’s voice is the constant throughout LOVE UNSPOKEN, at times feeling like it’s unlikely that it could compete with some of the weight of the electronic production around it. And yet it does, moving between vulnerability, anger and full theatricality without losing the person inside the songs, or their relevance. These are tracks that could comfortably live on a club floor, and several feel ripe for remixes, but reducing them solely to dance music would overlook much of what Andrew is doing.

If Love Arsonist opened the book on a damaging relationship, ‘Love Unspoken’ doesn’t close it with a convenient happily-ever-after. Instead, the final track steps into something less certain but arguably all the more interesting; someone rediscovering themselves, still carrying hope, and ready to see what comes next.