On 'Lucky Clover', Whisper Doll Finds Sanctuary in the Dark
For Fiona Tagami, Whisper Doll began in a bedroom in Atlanta, long before it became the Brooklyn band it is now. While still in high school, she started writing music there, drawn to the hazy, intimate world of bands such as The Sundays, Mazzy Star and The Cranberries. By the time Perfume Garden appeared in 2024, Tagami had moved to New York and was gradually building the band she had always wanted Whisper Doll to become.
The difference between the two records is partly due to different circumstances. Perfume Garden was mainly recorded before the band formed. In contrast, Lucky Clover is the first Whisper Doll album to be made entirely in New York, with the full involvement of the band: Shawn Majeed on drums, Maya Lagman on guitar, and Julia Chrzanowski on bass. The producer, Oscar Compo, also played a key role in shaping a sound that draws on ’80s and ’90s dream pop and shoegaze while incorporating contemporary pop melodies and textures.
Whisper Doll’s identity is in part outside the songs themselves. Tagami creates mood boards while writing, imagines the visual world of individual songs, and carries those ideas into artwork and videos. Parks, gardens, and night-time spaces have become recurring motifs, partly because she sees them as places of refuge within the city. “Without the parks and gardens, this city would feel a lot darker,” she adds.
The visual language became more deliberate on Lucky Clover. While Perfume Garden was written 'sporadically across many years', the new album was created through a more focused process. Tagami consciously considered how the songs would fit together. 'I wanted to tell a more cohesive story,' she says, adding that she also wanted to create stronger visuals to support the narrative. While she sees Perfume Garden as denser, she describes the new record as “more spacious and light”.
The songs themselves can be direct when they need to be. On “Am I a Knife,” Tagami addresses experiences of being seen and objectified, but says that greater specificity was not something she consciously planned. “It was less of a conscious decision and more so that it felt natural to be specific with something so visceral and upsetting,” she explains. Elsewhere, the album continues to blur the boundary between music and its surrounding world.
This impulse stems partly from how Tagami herself discovered music. 'I got into music through the visual worlds of my favourite artists,' she says. “I love being able to enter an artist's world as you listen; it makes the experience feel so rich.” With Lucky Clover, she has tried to offer listeners the same kind of entry point — not just a collection of songs, but a place with its own colours, images, and atmosphere.
Having toured the U.S. and Japan and performed New Colossus, Tagami is now looking ahead to a new chapter. She says she is most excited to tour more and introduce the world of Whisper Doll to new people. When the album reaches the end of its journey, she hopes that what remains is perhaps the simplest thing on the record: 'the light-hearted and flowing feeling of gratitude' she felt while making it.
Lucky Clover is released today, October 2, via Take Care Records.
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