I got home from work in
time to see the third period of my Bruins beating the Philadelphia Flyers. Go Bruins!
Disc 1349 is…Salt
Artist:
Angie McMahon
Year of Release: 2019
What’s up with the
Cover?
Angie McMahon chills in her overalls. I could never appreciate overalls.
They’re like ill-fitting jeans that make it complicated to use the toilet. I
guess they’re useful if you want to paint a wooden fence or something, like that
one behind her. Maybe that's the plan.
How I Came to Know
It: I read a review of this
album somewhere but can’t remember where. The usual suspects are Paste
Magazine, Pitchfork, or maybe American Songwriter?
Anyway, I couldn’t find
that review, but I’m writing my own anyway, so it matters little.
How It Stacks Up: “Salt” is McMahon’s
debut album, so there isn’t anything to stack it up against yet. Fun fact,
though – she’s on a Tom Waits cover record called “Come On Up to the House”
where she does a lovely version of “Take It With Me”.
I’ll talk about that record when I roll it. For now, let’s get back on
track.
Ratings: 3 stars
Angie McMahon is an old soul in a couple of
ways. First, she was previously in a soul band called The Fabric. Second, she has
that world-weary quality that I associate with old souls.
“Salt” is more atmospheric indie rock than soul,
although McMahon’s musical stylings hark back to her previous incarnation. Her
vocals are big, rounded and smokey around the edges. Her range is significant,
having a watery warble at the low end and a breathy whisper in the high. Her
guitar is a good match to this sound; atmospheric and resonant. McMahon plays
it sparsely but still fills a room.
When she rocks it out a bit, as she does on “Keeping
Time,” the effect is powerful, hitting you like a series of cresting waves.
The song benefits from a catchy guitar riff that grounds the song’s rhythm and
lets her warble above and below the melody as the mood moves her.
There is also a melancholia to her, best
evidenced on “Slow Mover,” which starts off with a tiring evening of seeking
a fried chicken stand at 4 a.m., and progresses to darker explorations of a relationship
with lines like:
“He thinks we could make it work
But only when he’s drunk
You think you could help me swim
But I’ve already sunk.”
Well…that’s uplifting. For all that, early on
with this record I was enjoying the sad wallow of it all. McMahon’s vocals are
raw and honest, and they leave you with the impression that she’s lived a lot
of life in a short period of time (that old soul thing again).
It helps that every few songs she drops what I
would call a crowd-pleaser; something slightly more up-tempo and with a catchy
riff. The last of these, “Pasta” is also the best. It isn’t fast or
danceable, but it has the same kind of slow chugging power of Joan Jett’s version
of “Crimson and Clover,” slow, and deliberate and tough as hell.
“Pasta” is a brilliant exploration of
depression, complete with a manic section halfway through where she tries to
pull herself out of the funk, with limited success. It’s a sad song, but it’s
also warm blanket of belonging to something. When McMahon repeatedly sings her
refrain of “I’ve been lost, I’ve been lost, I’ve been lost…for a while”
it becomes an immersive emotional experience.
Unfortunately, it feels like as “Pasta”
comes to an end, so does the energy of the record. The final third of the album
consists of four songs that become progressively more inward and disconnected. McMahon
appears to be trying to dig even deeper into a general mood (one of the songs
is even called “Mood Song”) but the record at this point starts to feel
self-indulgent rather than comforting.
It doesn’t help that with her vowel-heavy
delivery and natural warble, she doesn’t always enunciate the lyrics to the
songs, opting instead for raw emotional delivery. Sometimes it works, and
sometimes it makes me frustrated as I only catch two out of every three words.
McMahon has a boatload of talent, both as a
performer and a songwriter. She’s not afraid to let you dive deep into her own fear
and uncertainty. When she does it well, you get emotionally resonant mood
pieces. When she misses, she leaves you with fragments of ideas that need more focus.
For all that unevenness, it is a solid debut, and I’m excited to see where she
goes from here.
Best tracks: Keeping Time, Slow Mover, Pasta
No comments:
Post a Comment