Rapid Fire Reviews: What Does Singer-Songwriter Even Mean

If there is one genre that always had way more releases than I could possibly ever cover, its rap. But a close second is indie/singer-songwriter records which are easy to produce and there are a LOT of them. It is also one of the most homogenized genres out there with so much of it sounding functionally indistinguishable sonically and relying on the personality or story-telling of its artist to bear the entire weight of the project. This means that I typically don't enjoy these style of projects as much as most, but I still think it's appropriate to get my thoughts out there on some of the bigger ones. 

Home Video - Lucy Dacus

While I haven't been head over heels for much of Lucy's work so far it's difficult to deny her talent as a vocalist and her infectious personality. When she's at her best as a soloist or member of boygenius she is capable of great things and after hearing a few good singles I was hoping that Home Video would be her best outing yet. The record does get off to a pretty strong start with singles like Hot & Heavy and VBS continuing to sound great. Even though the more lowkey tracks have never really been all that memorable for me I do think they contain major lyrical highlights with Cartwheel and Thumbs both being examples of songs with vibrant lyricism, though back to back they do feel like a bit of a momentum shifter for the second half of the record. The second half doesn't get off to a great start with the charming but gimmicky Going Going Gone getting old pretty quickly and the rumbling drums and vocal effects clashing with Lucy's style in a very big way on Partner In Crime which is probably my least favorite track here. Thankfully the back end of the record has the full array of Lucy's songwriting on display with the hilarious break-up tune Brando and the earnest, sentimental Please Stay. Unfortunately I think the long closing track is a bit of a miss. There are parts of the story I find compelling each and every time I return to the song but as a whole the nearly 8 minute run time can be an absolute slog especially at the end of the album. Home Video is definitely my favorite of Lucy's records so far and I find it to be the most interesting by a longshot. It has me anticipating what she will do next, even if I don't think I'll come back to the record as a whole anytime soon given that I find a number of the tracks to be on the boring side. There is plenty here that once again proves how good Lucy can be at her best and I think she's moving in the right direction towards that. 6.5/10

I Know I'm Funny Haha - Faye Webster

I enjoyed Faye's last album for what it was and I was excited to see what direction she would move in with her next project. I was very surprised to read the near universal praise of this album which given it's absolutely awful title I assumed would be a series of inoffensive indie pop tunes. Generally speaking I do like this record, but there are two MAJOR hurtles involving the albums painfully obvious influences that any listener will have to overcome to enjoy it. On the vocal end it's so obvious I feel like I don't even need to say it, Faye sounds like Melanie Martinez. Not only does she sound a lot like her but all over this record there are specific refrains that sound so incredibly similar to other specific refrains from Melanie's catalog that it seems almost impossible for Faye to have stumbled upon them coincidentally. The second distraction is an easier one to look past. If you've ever heard the Japanese Breakfast album Soft Sounds From Another Planet you have essentially heard the entire instrumental palette of I Know I'm Funny. Thankfully it's a versatile sound and while I once again find it almost impossible for this to be a coincidence, Faye executes the same versatility that Michelle does on Soft Sounds. So about the actual music on this album, it's honestly pretty good. The songs are dreamy, occasionally blissful and the lonely lyrical themes project pandemic era isolation consistently throughout. The instrumental ambition reaches well beyond your standard indie bedroom pop affair and keeps these track shimmering in their own way throughout. On the singer-songwriter side of things Faye really shines as a storyteller and emotional provocateur. While there are plenty of tik tok indie sad girl lyrical moments across the album they all come with an edge and experience that I find pretty enjoyable. The biggest accomplishment on the lyrical side of things is that the title track almost justifies the records title to me. While I would still rather it be almost anything else I guess Faye provides a decent explanation for the choice. The only real slog in the tracklist is the incredibly painful five minute cut Kind Of which comes on the back of a strong intro for the record. Thankfully the second half picks it right back up with highlights in Cheers, Both All The Time, A Dream With A Baseball Player and Overslept. I Know I'm Funny Haha is a versatile listen that manages to provide Faye's insightful retrospections with an infectious array of instrumentation that is lush and blissful, but rarely boring. If she wasn't on the radar of indie pop fans before, she certainly should be now. 7.5/10

Sling - Clairo

I can't say I was necessarily excited for this record given how mixed I was on the first Clairo album, and how much the lead single had that same obviously contrived bedroom indie sound to it. To me it's so painfully clear that Clairo is shooting for an aesthetic it almost makes the whole concept null and void. But on this record the addition of Jack Antonoff at least adds some more versatility to the songwritng and instrumentals even if the ambition is still extremely limited. The track that made me excited about the records potential, at least at first was Amoeba. It's pretty rare to hear so many people talking about a specific album track so shortly after its release but I saw a lot of discourse surrounding the tune and for good reason, it's great. It's a fun groovy piano jam indie pop song that feels like a flavor of the 2000's mixed in with an authentic take on the bedroom pop aesthetics Clairo built her sound on. Unfortunately the record is full of a lot of the plucky guitar sounds and extremely soft vocals that I was fearful of. The best thing the album has to offer is an array of instrumentation. It was clearly a focus of Jack or Claire or maybe both to give this album an instrumental versatility to break up some of the monotony and it sometimes works. The songwriting on the other hand suffers, with less catchy hooks and interesting refrains on Sling than appeared on Clairo's last record. Those simple catchy refrains made some of her extremely dry songs a bit more tolerable and on this record it's almost like the job of that has been replaced by the extra instrumentation. There are moments on the album that flirt with being some kind of under-produced baroque pop album and other moments that take a much more simple and spacious approach. The success of the tracks really does come down to the songwriting and while you'll catch a lot of extremely simple compositions on the album, they actually work more than they don't. Where they don't work is right in the middle of the record which presents a slog that I have trouble sitting through every single time I hear the album. While there is relief in the back half getting through the pair of four minute tracks that appear right in the middle record alone is tough and that's not even the entire lull. There are other highlights like Partridge, the largely instrumental Joanie and the bouncy folk flavored finale Management. But when all is said and done I would not recommend listening to this album in its entirety to anyone but those so single-mindedly dedicated to lo-fi bedroom indie pop that they will even fall for someone faking it. What Jack does on this record is often quite admirable and Clairo's vocals continue to be sweet, but neither are enough to overcome the records most lifeless moments. 5/10