Austel has released her second album Mirror To Mine, a self-produced ten-track record mixed by Grace Banks that finds the Devon-born artist and producer digging into memory, homecoming and quieter forms of emotional change. Acoustic-led and rich in detail, the independently released album arrives alongside focus single ‘Coast To Coast’ and a June UK tour.
Mirror To Mine Review
Mirror To Mine is full of quiet confidence. Austel does not mistake gentleness for weakness, and that matters straight away. These songs move carefully, but they do not feel fragile. Nylon-string guitar, subtle arrangements and delicately placed field recordings give the album a soft edge, yet there is real shape and intention underneath it all. It sounds like a record made by somebody who knows exactly how much feeling can live inside restraint.
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After Austel widened the frame on Dead Sea, she narrows the lens here without making the music feel smaller. Mirror To Mine pays close attention to place, texture and the emotional charge hidden inside ordinary details. You can sense it in titles like ‘Hotel Room Window View’, ‘The Beach In December’ and ‘White Linen’, which already suggest a world built from rooms, distances and half-held memories. This is an album that understands how much weight a small image can carry when it is placed carefully enough.
Memory, homecoming and quiet change
That patience is one of the record’s real strengths. Austel has spoken about a longing to return to music made before too much external influence, and the album does seem to reach back towards something older and more instinctive. Not in a nostalgic, sepia-toned way, but in a way that feels like honest excavation. These songs sound as though they are trying to sit with long-dormant thoughts, old places and unfinished emotional business until they finally give something back.
The result is reflective without ever going vague. That matters, because albums this hushed can sometimes drift into atmosphere alone. Mirror To Mine avoids that by keeping its emotional centre close. Even when the arrangements feel featherlight, the songs themselves seem grounded in lived experience. There is a steadiness to the writing that stops the album from floating away.
‘Coast To Coast’ sounds especially important in that context. As the closing track and focus single, it appears to gather the album’s recurring ideas into one final look back over distance, belonging and a life slowly finding a new shape. Written around a decade-long journey that began when Austel left home, it seems to close the record not with a grand flourish but with perspective. That feels exactly right for an album like this. It trusts the accumulated feeling of the whole journey more than any single dramatic moment.
There is also something quietly impressive in how complete the record feels. Austel is not only a songwriter but a producer with a clear ear for mood, pacing and space, and Mirror To Mine benefits from that all the way through. Nothing here feels overworked. Just as importantly, nothing feels accidental. The album carries the kind of balance that makes intimate music feel substantial rather than slight.
For me, this is a beautifully realised album. It sounds warm, thoughtful and deeply lived-in, with enough subtlety to keep revealing more of itself over time. Austel has made records worth spending time with before, but Mirror To Mine feels especially sure of its own voice. It does not chase attention. It earns it slowly, which is exactly why it lingers.
You can buy a physical copy of Mirror To Mine here, where the album is also available to stream, and follow Austel on Instagram.
