Lawn Girl

Meeting at an appealing crossroads of 1990s inspirations including catchy grunge-pop (Veruca Salt), noisy alt-rock (Sonic Youth), and more intimate, damaged introspection (Elliott Smith), Lawn Girl is the debut of Mandy, the solo alias of Miranda Winters, lead singer/guitarist for Chicagos Melkbelly. Consisting of songs written over a span of several years, some of which shed already recorded on her own (but never released), the album was tracked with producer Taylor Hales at Electrical Audio. These sessions included re-recording the existing songs with room mikes, although Winters put a premium on capturing the essence of earlier versions, a process she likened to photocopying. To perform the distortion-heavy tunes, she assembled a backing band consisting of guitarist Linda Sherman, bassist Lizz Smith, and drummer Wendy Zeldin, who helped represent Lawn Girls thematic exploration of femininity through life experience. (The sport of field hockey is represented in the cover art.) Included in the otherwise all-original set, and sandwiched in the middle of the track list, is a dingy, lo-fi version of Jimmy Webbs "Now That Im a Woman" from beloved 80s film The Last Unicorn. Its double-tracked vocals and minimal guitar (and opening sniffle) definitely fall in the Smith/Phair category of performance. Among the more driving, rousing fare here are the riff-loaded "High School Boyfriend," "A Series of Small Explosions," and the dark and fuzzy "Ms. Appear," which finds her wanting to stick around less and less the more the guy talks ("What a disappointment"). Seeming to end just as soon as it began, on the solo, demo-like "Come On. And, Do Thee Exist?," the under-25-minute LP is a quick and cathartic one well-suited for pre-event or post-event emotional processing. ~ Marcy Donelson