This is pretty out of the norm for my lovably zZaAnNyY writing antics, but I've been doing little reviews on rateyourmusic.com, lately, mostly just to dick around and get my head Back In The Game™. I'm preeeetttyyy positive that no one needs a new assessment of an album that came out 3 years ago that was covered by all mainstream alternative music journals, but that's the fun of not giving a shit and doing things for the sake of doing them - SMASHIN THE CAPITALIST AGENDA, imo. Anyway, here's this dull, fairly reserved shit:
I already did a little backstory thing for the Ivy Tripp review, but basically, I was a ridiculously huge fan of Katie's output from 2008 to 2013. I got the p.s. eliot demo off a blog randomly and never turned back, eating up their whole discography, as well as Bad Banana, the King Everything tapes, Waxahatchee's split w/ Chris Clavin, American Weekend, and even cried like a wimp at p.s. eliot's last show.
Needless to say, I was pretty forthy in the jaw when the announcement for this album came about, and then - subsequently - in denial about how little I liked it for about a year. I've since concluded that some albums are growers and some are just sort of impossible, and this falls somewhere in the middle (though definitely leaning more towards the latter).
On this album, Katie chose to abandon the ultra lo-fi bedroom sound of her earlier solo works, so the majority of tracks are augmented by a couple musician friends, and presented with crystal clear production. That said, the focus still remains squarely on the bare songwriting itself, so the accompanying musicians never act as much more than stagehands for her performance. What this unfortunately translates into is a handful of otherwise decent songs turning to complete slogs due to to a bunch of clumpy, meandering studio takes. Seriously, Kyle McBride and Keith Spencer sound like fucking automatons fulfilling a programmed function more than members of a band, here. There's just no sense of chemistry or that they're even playing in the same state, let alone the same studio. Just sterile plodding that not only provides no energy, but stymies all existing energy.
If anything, though, it's the songwriting that fails to grab me. I dunno if this is due to Katie obviously reaching into new reference pools for her sound or what, but almost none of these tracks have an emotional core that I connect with. While "Blue Pt. II", "Tangled Envisioning", and "You're Damaged" are all pretty and likable, only the minimal bass-driven "Brother Bryan" and the incredibly poignant "Lively" crush my heart the way her old stuff used to. The rest alternates between sounding like weird, unfinished experiments or... just plain boring 90's grab bag alternative music.
I get that musicians get sick of doing the same old shit, and change their sound as their tastes shift and they age, but really, the shift out of the familiar twee pop/pop punk/loner acoustica realm just doesn't do it for me. The songwriting - minus the tacked on accompaniments - is pretty scattershot, the production and back up tracks are bleach-tier sterile, and the lyrics just don't hit home in that bookish, broken hearted way that all her old projects used to boast. I think I'll continue to revisit this every 4-6 months for the conceivable future, but this is still one of the biggest letdowns I can think of.
Like, in a musical sense. My life hasn't been that good.
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