Over the last few years, a wave of young women, indie singer-songwriters has been releasing the kind of music I started to rely on, as if it was not the inner tube on the turbulent river, something I can depend on, turning my face to the sun. I think Mitski, Waxahatchee, Jay som: women who write clean and affectionate tones, the anguish and frustration in his lyrics, and the cradle of their songs in distortion and sincerity and guitar. In March of this informal movement seemed to sharpen. Mom put out her debut Studio album, “pure”, and Lucy Dacus released their second L. P., “the historian”. Then came regular mail in a “pristine,” perfect single from her upcoming album, “lush”. I found myself taking wrong turns on the short drives so I could listen to these artists on repeat. There was something particularly clever about these releases, abrupt and indifferent to the mind that occurs when you’re not looking at it as a picture in a magic eye picture. Young female singer-songwriters often write as sources of pure youth angst and emotions, but each of these writers has a sharp command of irony, and often understand the feelings of a lyric to the tune, she goes and how she sings the line.
“Mommy.”
Photo by shervin Lainez Ialoveni
“Mommy” is the stage name of a nineteen-year-old Sophie Allison, from Nashville, who started putting songs on bandcamp before she moved to new York, to College in 2015; after a couple of years at new York University, she quit and moved home. It combines mischief and sharpness OK, Liz fair, and her voice has a quality like melting ice cream—sweet and endearingly messy, slipped on the pitch of the note. “Clean” has an instant-classic single called “your dog” in which Allison turned extreme devotion to the famous song 1969 by the Stooges. “I don’t want to be your dog that you drag around,” she yells. Melody on the hook spoken and calm, stressing that “dog” as a feisty teenager in the middle of battle. With a straight face insouciance, Alison sings about crawling in the collar, was tied to a pole outside in the cold. In the video for this song, she sits on the balcony, in the Golden sunset, stroking the hand of the guy she just killed. She gently decorates the face with a black marker. He’s very sharp, because it’s almost—almost—sweet.
Sometimes, it is more straightforward: “I want to be the one you miss when you’re lonely / I want to be the one you kiss when you’re high,” she sings on “skin”. It’s just her voice and guitar is simple and modest. But the impact on Alison’s imbued with a kind of dizziness and sardonic narrative distance, which will become a second home for young people who grew up with memes. One track, “the Last girl” begins with Marvelettes-style melody, the little finger-snap a riff that sounds promising, skipping cheerfully up the scale. For this, Alison rhyme “I want to be like your last girlfriend” “I’m just dying flower”is the Magic number-eye that occurs in the contrast between the optimism and pathos.
Lucy Dacus, twenty-two-year-old musician from Richmond, recorded his first album “no load” in 2015 because her friend Jacob Blizard—guitarist who still plays with Dacus—submit the project for credit in Oberlin. On winter vacation, they booked a Studio with his friend, producer Colin Pastor, and spent two hours recording a collection of songs for the Dacus. It was the first time she had ever sung with the band, she told the times. The opening track of the album was attention-grabbing demonstration of crafts called “I don’t want to be funny”. The dacus folded comment on social expectations and layers of narrative in a series of cool hooks: “I’m too short skirt, maybe I can be the cute one / is there a place in the group? I don’t need to be in front of a man / if not, then I’m the biggest fan.”
The dacus is an elegant, prophetic voice, like Sharon van Etten, and an attractive sense of humor that reminds me of Jenny Lewis. “The historian” is a serious album, conscious, and emotionally acute. At the same time, it’s funny that the way Kylie was funny how the female country singers often funny: Dacus sweetly singing his way through a series of difficult, painful situations, controlling the tone of her voice and the words to be harsh and soft and not very flip. “Bad habits,” she sings on “buy low, sell high kind of guy” at one point, said to him: “Invest your time in something that is worth / I risk no reward, or I make you proud?” Navy pipes to come, and if the Dacus is sweeping the street in a random parade; she mocks him, and mocking myself still interested in it. She sounds cheerful and sad and vulnerable.
Mail.
Photo Michael Lavine
That is, the eighteen-year-old Lindsey Jordan, head, three parts regular mail. “Lush” in June, deceptively lo-Fi: the Jordan writes with a fierce and ambitious mind, she carefully underplays. The album’s first single, “pristine”, is the perfect bright piece of melancholy, built on a series of melodic breaks and jumps. It is written in the eternal present-time hobby: on her choir, Jordan sings, “I know myself, and I will never love anyone else / I won’t love anyone else / I’ll never love anyone else.” As a thought is repeated, the melody is exacerbated when you’re in unrequited love, you can say the same thing again and again and I think you’re on to something new. The bridge of the song builds to a climax, a series of insane questions—“who is at the top of your world?” she cries, “and everyone who has your Type of girl?”—what will collapse in the heady, crazy unilateral arms. “We can be anyone, even each other,” she sings, the one person who probably won’t listen. Jordan’s father said that “pristine” is “very romantic and sometimes sarcastic sorry … I was just trying to put that Oh my God, if you don’t love me I will die feeling that you have but You do not want to Express outwardly, because it’s embarrassing.” This, in particular, this unflappable self-awareness and instinct in order to Express it in a way that feels vast and fruitful, not narrow or limit—what gives the work of these singer-songwriters such emotional precision. There is irony creeping into all of our sadness these days.
Sourse: newyorker.com
