Please Daddy

After leaving her role as leader of post-grunge outfit Batrider to embark on a solo career, Sarah Mary Chadwick established an even rawer, more tormented performance style that she pairs with deeply vulnerable lyrics and typically stark accompaniment. Across her first three albums, instrumentation often consisted solely of a guitar or keyboard. She eventually brought in an outside rhythm section for 2018s Sugar Still Melts in Rain, though the next years The Queen Who Stole the Sky was a solo effort featuring Chadwick and a 19th century pipe organ. Her sixth solo album, 2019s Please Daddy, features Chadwicks most expansive palette yet, not only returning bassist/co-producer Geoffrey O’Connor and drummer Tim Deane-Freeman from Sugar Still Melts in Rain but enlisting flute and trumpet players, along with her own keyboards and vocals. It should be noted that the songs here are still distinctly stark, but adding more timbres to the mix is a headline-worthy development for Chadwick. It coincides with a movement toward more engaging melodies and a more welcoming demeanor, in general, at least musically speaking. Her lyrics are still brutally candid and vulnerable, as evident in the resigned opening words Im falling apart/I suspect Im blowing it/And I thought I was past this/But Im losing it on a track called When Will Death Come. Not for the faint of heart, the lyrics lead to a more openly anguished chorus that, while melodic, howls for relief over its pounding piano chords, harmonic flute and trumpet, and drums that maintain a cabaret-friendly 6/8 time (If you feel the same as me, I pity you now). Only just the opener, its followed by devastating tracks including the slow and mournful Im Not Allowed in Heaven, Lets Fight, and All Lies. For those familiar with Chadwicks previous work, in addition to the lyrics especially low lows, noteworthy is the albums tunefulness, especially in the case of the soaring piano pop entry Please Daddy and reflective Make Hey. Though there are plenty of her trademark semi-melodic, improvised-sounding tirades as well, among the other surprises is Lets Fight, whose brisk gallop evokes retro country-rock. As Chadwick continues to experiment with means of expression, it seems fitting that some of her darkest lyrics inhabit a set that is arguably her most ear-pleasing to this point. ~ Marcy Donelson