A female folk/country/indie singer-songwriter with a mouthy, inflected voice that spins webs of personal details and poetic observations? Not my cup of Starbucks locally-sourced organic Chamomotherfucking tea.
And yet! Despite the rap, this is not that.
On the first, folkier side, Barnett herself shows through clear as day, coming across as one of those girls that bookish boys might be fascinated by, an alternative to all the superficiality, such thought and feeling, they mutter. But one of those girls that, once the boy musters up the nerve try to date, reveals herself to be complex actual person, with problems that don't exist just to charm you - only the best bookish boy survives! There's an element of Wes Anderson; dark currents under overclever trappings.
The songs are pretty, the backing rich and full, and even the poetry
lands harder than it tends to on this jaded shard of heart. Stages get
set, atmosphere gets built, right angles hitch into place with a
satisfying *click*.
On the second side the drones work their way in, the pace stretches, everything gets a lot more Yo La Tengo, and it saps a lot of the energy. That girl we came to know lost in a haze of weedsmoke.
The two halves don't work together, there's too many things going on here to take it as a whole, but I grudgingly admire it and grudgingly admit that's the kind of independence that got our attention in the first place 3.5/5
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