Matilda Mann Is Jazzed-Up, Lovesick, and All Herself on debut album roxwell, that isn’t reinventing the pop genre, but giving it a much needed refresh.
Finding Matilda Mann was kind of like fate. In 2023, I was in London, staying with my family for summer vacation, and I was just scrolling on Instagram when I found her on my explore page. There was no indication that she was a singer — I just thought she was so pretty, so I followed her. Then the next day, it showed up on my feed that she was doing a free concert in Primrose Hill.
My sister and I, with summer days growing long and nothing else to do, got on the train, and 40 minutes later, we were sat in the park, smattered with blankets and among maybe 30 other fans while Matilda performed songs off her newest EP at the time, You Look Like You Can’t Swim, a five-song collection of acoustic, wistful tunes. The setup was mere rainbow-colored bunting hung between two trees, and the mic feed kept cutting out because of the wind, but sitting there, listening, I felt like I was watching something at the very beginning. Like in ten years, I’d truly be able to say I was there for Matilda Mann from the start.
Now, with the release of her debut album Roxwell, it’s clear just how much she’s grown while still holding onto what made her special from the start.
Roxwell is a supercut of an album, flickering between meeting someone in the bathroom at a party you barely remember, sitting in the cold at 3 a.m. with wind in your hair and a jacket he let you borrow, being 23 and still needing your best friends like you’re back in that childhood bedroom. Mann guides us through exciting, chaotic, buzzy, tumultuous relationships, but underneath the love and heartbreak is a quieter search: for self-worth, clarity, and a sense of who she is when no one else is looking.
None of these are feelings that have gone underexplored in music, especially not today, when indie-pop is full of young women making acoustic confessions sound universal. We’re in the era of Phoebe Bridgers, Gracie Abrams, Olivia Rodrigo, Beabadoobee, girl in red, Kahlea Lee, Lucy Dacus, Jensen McRae, Lizzy McAlpine, and Maisie Peters (to name a few) — artists who write, sing, and strum about the trials and tribulations of being a woman living life with her heart on her sleeve. What sets Matilda Mann apart from her peers is the way she excels across the board: in her lyricism, in her voice, and in her arrangements. Her EP You Look Like You Can’t Swim is a charming collection built on soft vocals and acoustic guitar, but Roxwell, while still rooted in that gentleness, moves toward something more expansive. It’s a pop and jazz-influenced record that bounces, crescendos, and brings a new energy to the indie singer-songwriter LP, making it stand out in a very crowded, sometimes monotonous, field.
The sound on Roxwell is genuinely refreshing. From the second track, “Say It Back,” it’s clear this album isn’t content to stay quiet. The song opens with 2000s garage-band-style drums, followed by a funky bassline and layers of electric guitar that gradually build as the track progresses. Each element slips into place without overpowering the others, creating a pulse that crawls under your skin and into your veins until it’s impossible not to move along. The arrangement stands out for its balance. Nothing gets buried or lost, not even Mann’s vocals, which float confidently over the shifting backdrop. The final pre-chorus pulls everything back to just her voice and soft guitar, before swelling into a full-bodied, cathartic finish.
Tracks like “Tell Me That I’m Wrong,” and “Common Sense” return to something more familiar, Mann’s signature introspection over steady, acoustic guitar, but this time, they’re elevated by lush, cinematic string sections that brings the tracks to life and will have you .
But, in my opinion, the best song on this record is “Meet Cute,” a playful bop about Mann’s infatuation with someone she just met. She slips into a slinky, teasing tone as she sings about late-night rendezvous, and the production follows her lead. The track opens with sensual, fluid drums and strings — jazzy, loose, and low to the ground. The drums tighten and hit harder, pulsing with intent, while the song grows more intense, more desperate, more fun. By the time the electric guitar crashes in, it’s no longer jazz but something messier, louder, euphoric, perfectly capturing the nature of relationships that spark under flashing lights and still crackle with the energy of being tempting, new and unpredictable.
One of the most striking things about Roxwell, and about Matilda Mann herself, is the way she captures the essence of girlhood. It’s a term that gets thrown around constantly online, often reduced to an aesthetic or used as a way to cling to a romanticized version of childhood. The whole “I’m just a girl” rhetoric has been repeated so often that it can feel less like empowerment and more like self-infantilization. That kind of framing has honestly turned me away from engaging with a lot of media that claims to be about girlhood. But what Mann offers feels entirely different. Her song “Girls” reminds us that girlhood is not a fixed state. It changes, it evolves, and sometimes it disappears before we even realize it. Coming of age as a young woman can feel like a hurricane, overwhelming and fast, but gone in an instant. You look back and barely recognize who you were. But finding joy in “being girls,” in remembering who you were with the people who helped shape you, can be grounding. Growing up should be something we feel drawn to, not something we fear. The ups and downs Mann sings about across the album—the intensity, the ache, the tenderness—come together to form something rich and real. It is a portrait of becoming that deserves its place in the canon of modern, introspective female storytelling.
All in all, Roxwell feels like the kind of debut that doesn’t try to prove itself. It just is what it is, and what it is happens to be thoughtful, sharp, and full of feeling. Matilda Mann knows exactly when to be quiet and when to go loud, when to lean into the sweetness of a crush and when to walk away from something that no longer serves her. She’s not reinventing heartbreak or friendship or the post-relationship spiral, but she’s capturing them in a way that feels specific, stylish, and new. In a sea of rising singer-songwriters, Roxwell doesn’t shout to be heard. It plays, it strums, it swoons, it stings. And by the end, you’re still listening. That’s the kind of staying power not every debut has, and the kind of artist Matilda Mann already is.
