Me And Ennui Are Friends Baby

After applying various spartan approaches on her different albums, singer/songwriter Sarah Mary Chadwick took a sharp left turn into ornate arrangements on her 2020 album Please Daddy. Even augmented by chamber pop flutes, airy soft rock instrumentation, and the occasional triumphant horn arrangement, Chadwicks songs of pain, sex, and betrayal were still anything but uplifting, instead pushing even further into the emotionally turbulent territory shed explored in more stripped-down forms on earlier albums. Me and Ennui Are Friends Baby finds Chadwick returning to just piano and vocals, leaving no place to hide for the crushing sadness that flows through every song. As bleak as the album can get, the empty arrangements are the perfect backdrop for Chadwicks bottomless depressive outpourings. Every Loser Needs a Mother spins through a Rolodex of unlikeable characters and reflects all the disgust inward, Chadwick accessing her self-destructive behavior with Bright Eyes levels of anguish. Its oddly catchy for a song so brutal, and this synthesis of melody and misery comes to define the album. Full Mood is softly aching and tuneful, Chadwicks voice brittle but confident as she sways between two chord verses and images of woozy nightlife scenes and all-consuming infatuation. Dont Like You Talking is just as spare, but uses double-tracked vocals in a sluggish, frowning melody line that drags itself through the lyrics of jealousy and self-doubt. Me and Ennui Are Friends Baby isnt an easy listen, but its a captivatingly beautiful bummer that ranks with the darkest, drunkest, most flailing moments of Leonard Cohen, Cat Power, and other perpetually sad-hearted songwriters. Chadwick is unafraid to dive to whatever depths of pain and unhidden vulnerability she can fathom on these songs, not necessarily looking for a way through the heavy times as much as striving to portray them as completely as possible. ~ Fred Thomas