In Canada (and in Lipsticism‘s hometown of Chicago), summer is painfully short. Stretches of June are spent planning the 8 or so weekends of heat and sun, balancing ambitious summer vacation plans against the desire to lay in the sun, next to a lake or a pool, dozing off and simply being. Wanted to Show You, the new album from Lipsticism, is the soundtrack to the latter. Alana Schachtel’s first record with Phantom Limb is a dream-pop record in the purest form: gauzy, and transportive, grounded by carefully layered production and a quiet emotional clarity.
Schachtel blends shoegaze, ambient pop, house, and light touches of acoustic guitar into something that feels warm, intimate and expansive. Lush vocals and fleeting, sun-baked lyrics, match with songs that flirt with atmosphere over structure. They aren’t just mood pieces, though: they form a subtle arc, like chapters in a loose narrative, or phases of an August weekend.
Early highlights “Tonight (Wake Me)” and “Feeling Why Do You Follow” are soft but insistent, built around house kicks and layered, gentle synths. They evoke a specific kind of movement: not a packed dancefloor, but a slow-motion sway. Schachtel told Foxy Digitalis that she hopes to “…inspire that state of “losing yourself” eyes closed, body moving without self-consciousness”, and those moments surface often throughout Wanted to Show You.
There’s complexity here too. The breakbeats of “I Could Die” and the uptempo controlled chaos of “Star For A Night” add urgency without breaking the atmosphere. Even as the album shifts in tone or tempo, it never feels disjointed. A song might move from gauzy guitar to dark, swirling synths, but the emotional throughline stays intact. That holds true through the more ambient direction that dominates the back half of the record, with the exceptions of the noisy, groovy title track and the uneasy, unsettling “Edge of the World”.
While Wanted to Show You is her first release with Phantom Limb, Schachtel has been building a distinct voice as Lipsticism for several years. Earlier releases leaned more heavily on lo-fi textures, ambient sketches, and the occasional detour into freak-folk. Those tendencies remain, in the guitar-forward moments and the gently off-kilter structures, but here they’re woven into something smoother and more assured. This record is a refinement on her earlier work: more polished, more focused, and more emotionally resonant, without losing the sense of quiet experimentation.
It’s an easy addition to the poolside playlist, and deep enough that several of these songs will linger long after the summer weather in Chicago fades.
