Album Review: Rabbit Hole by Mindy Gledhill

_{By Davis Blount}

For anyone even remotely familiar with the Utah music scene, the name Mindy Gledhill is not only a familiar one, but a name that many feel they can personally connect with. Gledhill’s career is one that has spread out across many eras and multiple artistic projects. Whether you know her from her contributions to EFY soundtracks, her features on Kaskade’s hit songs, her solo work, or one of her side projects like Hive Riot or Madam Bandit, nearly everyone has a deep connection to at least one brainchild of Gledhill’s layered and incredibly diverse musical career. 

In Rabbit Hole, Gledhill is at the height of her powers, effortlessly bounding between beautiful ballads and buoyant anthems. The album borrows elements from all of the Gledhill’s previous experience and folds it all together for a deeply satisfying result. The entire album jumps between bouncy jams and heart-wrenching pieces of solitude, but with a sense of coherence. Indeed, this album could be reshuffled and repackaged as two separate EPs: an ebullient homage to the music of Mindy Gledhill’s past, and a solemn, longing set of songs, unflinching in their honesty. To do so, however, would rob Rabbit Hole of its full impact. By taking listeners through the highs and lows, the frenetic and the calm, Gledhill mimics the topsy-turvy pattern of life down the “Rabbit Hole.”

Gledhill’s voice soars over the album’s title track, “Rabbit Hole,” inviting listeners to jump into this deeply personal and confessional album headfirst. As a gentle mentor with seemingly limitless compassion, Gledhill invites the listener to make the “terrifying and wonderful” jump into the strange new world. She beckons:

Even when you’re broken
There are always doors to open
New dimensions to explore
But you won’t know until you’re in a thousand pieces on the floor
And you’re falling down the rabbit hole
It’s terrifying and wonderful

The title track serves as a kind of metaphorical roadmap for the journey listeners are about to embark on. Gledhill opens new doors, explores new dimensions, and pulls from every corner of her artistic arsenal.

Rabbit Hole is a concentrated dose of sonic catharsis throughout. Listeners will be invited to dance, weep, meditate, and everything in between over the course of the album’s 14 tracks. While the entire album is deserving of praise, it starts at its absolute zenith, the album’s namesake serving as its crown jewel. The album’s closing songs, acoustic reworkings of “Wild Card” and “Icarus,” are serene and beautiful, but leave one yearning for an ending as impactful as its beginning. A case could be made, however, that this was done deliberately: once entering the “Rabbit Hole,” things may never be the same again. Does the album guide is listeners back to the real world? Or is the album’s close merely the end of Gledhill’s mentorship in this strange new world? Perhaps the gentle end is not unlike a parent teaching a child to ride a bike without training wheels: a firm grip to steady the child at first, and gradually letting them trust their own balance until gently letting go. 

Rabbit Hole is not a greatest hits album, but rather, a display of all that Gledhill has taken from her various stops throughout her musical journey. Her artistic fingerprints are evident on each song, with each delicate turn of phrase. Fans of Mindy Gledhill will be delighted to hear her artistic growth after finally returning to solo work, while new listeners will bask in the talents of a singer who has spent decades perfecting her craft.

Make sure to follow Mindy Gledhill on Instagram. You can listen to “Rabbit Hole” below!