Tilly Vickers Willis goes deep trip hop nostalgia on brooding new single, 'Aching Never Leaves' - announces debut album

Photo credit - Steph Reid (photo edited to suit publication)

The entrancing vocal tones of Naarm/Melbourne artist, Tilly Vickers Willis (TVW) returns with the brand new single, ‘Aching Never Leaves’, which comes from her upcoming debut album, ‘Silver Halide Film’, which lands on Friday, April 17.

The brooding track, created in collaboration with Morgan Wright of Acopia and produced by Dean Tuza (Stella Donnelly) is about someone completely snowed under by grief, desperately holding onto the feeling because the ache is proof that love was once there. 

TVW shares, “It's written in the moment of grief, from the perspective of someone who's really in it. They're trying to hold onto that, to stay in the heightened state of love and connection, but it’s not a sustainable thing. You have to find a way to let go.”

She adds, “I was interested in Fado music, which is a style of Portuguese music centred around the word ‘Saudade' (which translates ‘music as a sweet longing/longing you love to feel’)."

Utterly haunting in both tone and restraint, Tilly Vickers Willis threads the shadowy textures of Portishead and Lamb through her own experimental lens on ‘Aching Never Leaves’. There’s a subtle ‘80s noir undercurrent running throughout—cool, dimly lit, and quietly unnerving—placing a singular spotlight on Willis’ arresting vocal delivery.|


Built on a foundation of rubbery low-end, skeletal trip-hop drums, and piano lines that drift rather than settle, the track feels suspended in place. Cinematic strings swell and recede in the background, adding to the sense of unease without ever overwhelming the arrangement. It’s an intense, slow-burning listen—one that doesn’t just pull you in, but gradually weighs you down, leaving you to sit with its lingering gravity.

‘Aching Never Leaves’ joins Silver Halide Film album singles ‘Do You Know’, a song about the moment of intuition returning, that wouldn’t be out of place on Jeff Buckley’s Grace, piano ballad, Circuit, which revels in the beautiful back-and-forth exchange of energies involved in stimulating, life-affirming conversation, and slinky, trip-hop track ‘Silver Halide Film'.


To produce an analogue photograph, silver halide crystals are suspended in gelatin, and exposed to light, creating an image composed of metallic silver. Melbourne musician Tilly Vickers Willis’ beautiful and haunting debut record, Silver Halide Film, which is about the depths of detachment and the sublimity of embodiment, is made up of similar elements. There is the shiny, icy tang of trip-hop, shimmering pockets of art pop, and TVW’s’ smoky vocals, which bind the whole record together. Here, every track is like a newly developed photograph, its own distinct, mysterious world, inky and wet to the touch, full of gorgeous, granulated textures.

The songs were written during a period of travel and exploration, after years beset by pandemic lockdowns and creative blockages. The album toggles between these states—downtempo, dissociative detachment and the almost mystical, but certainly magical, feeling of connection; not only with others but with one’s own body. 

“I’ve come to realise that the album is less about a journey to embodiment, and more an exploration of all the different points within those two extremes.” says TVW. “It’s not about the destination of joy, or a cathartic resolution, it’s more an interplay between these emotional states.”

The recording process was slow and meticulous, with TVW working with long-time collaborator Dean Tuza to create a sonic tapestry of gloomy organs, woozy guitars and ghosty falsettos.

‘Aching Never Leaves’ is out now on all streaming platforms, with ‘Silver Halide Film’ arriving on April 17 - but you can pre-order through Bandcamp now.

Related articles