A true artist that does not shy away from digging deep within, to find that vulnerable space, to bring it to the surface, and then shine a light on it for all to see.

Empire Music

Laura Hickli brought her emotive and powerful dark pop into the open. With songs about hardship and trauma, Hickli’s voice kept the gathering crowd spellbound in her trance.

Beatroute Magazine

The confidence with which Hickli executes (‘Both Feet In The World, At Least I Can Stand’) invokes both the fear of death and the counterintuitive comfort of surrender without needing to explain. It’s just felt, instinctively.

Left of the Dial

Calgary’s classically-trained, award-winning Hickli possesses a beguiling voice that flabbergasts on the first list; see ‘Two Dogs’, the breathtaking, pin drop-quiet piano recitation that opens her half of this split LP. On that, and gripping, portentous, vocoder-accented single “Love, Outlive Me’ and ‘Unholy Power,’ her dulcet, vowels-stretching vibrato blends Elizabeth Fraser and Kate Bush, turning each of her five confessional songs into poignant, spine-tingling treasures.

The Big Takeover

Hickli’s album is a dream-like, haunting baroque-pop collection that makes good use of her elegant vocals and classical music training as a pianist. The songs are deeply personal accounts of the Calgary artist’s break from a strict religious upbringing and reflect a specific and recent period of transformation for the songwriter.

Calgary Herald

Acting as a sort of therapist to herself, her confession-style lyrics are not only bound to help Hickli through self-disclosure, but the many people who feel similarly during this time.

Northern Transmissions

‘FLOWSTATE’ Reviews

Laura Hickli’s sound is unique to Calgary’s scene: ethereal and mystic, it floats like waves of light through the trees, eschewing bombast in favour of spectral melodies over tightly-arranged ambient soundscapes. Her 2017 full-length debut, Flowstate, is an exercise in atmosphere, understated and dreamy, with the confidence to leave spaces in the music that suggests a wisdom beyond her years.

Block Heater (Calgary Folk Music Festival)

Whether it be the whisper-to-howl anguish of Running in the Dark or the fragile, creeping dread of Snow and Ashes, the songs on Flowstate are both beautiful and haunting, with the singer’s layered self-harmonizing backed by delicate classical guitar or piano. Melodramatic and confessional, they often recall the work of Julien Baker or the quieter moments from Waxahatchee.

The Calgary Herald