Anchors and Anvils

Distinguished from the herd of singer-songwriters out there in that her coy vocals, set to arrangements of the country-pop persuasion, both belie and uphold some serious lyrical sentiments. “She’s planning on killing him/but knows that even that won’t make the love go away.” The simple arrangements—veering from country-politan to softly inflected rock—suit the material as she realizes that pointless drinking means everything ends up sounding like slurred Spanish. Lamenting that you never really know your friends and realize that you’re tragically flawed, she’s off the beaten path but attentive to the conceits that anchor Southern gothic murder ballads. Her reinvented versions are torchy vocals forged on a velvet anvil, purring around your ears, waltzing through a landscape where you don’t feel a thing. Time’s a train, and night is a veil.