Sweetness

Throughout the early 2020s, singer/songwriter Rebecca Harvey made a name for herself under the music alias girlpuppy with her moody blend of midtempo indie rock, floatier dream pop, and sparer intimacy, including on her debut LP, When Im Alone. That album was produced by Sam Acchione (Alex G, Tomberlin), mixed by Slow Pulps Henry Stoehr, and released on Royal Mountain Records. For the darker, heavier-textured follow-up, she adds washes of shoegaze, grungier alt-rock, and catchy 2000 indie pop/rock for her Captured Tracks label debut. Titled Sweetness (from a personal nickname), it was produced and co-written by Alex Farrar (Wednesday, Horse Jumper of Love) and finds Harvey ditching what were, for her, the pressures and insecurity of playing instruments, instead turning everything but singing over to a backing band. Building songs from the skeletons of a cappella voice memos, that band included Beach Fossils’ Tommy Davidson, the War on Drugs’ Dave Hartley, and Horse Jumper of Love’s Dimitri Giannopoulos. With Harvey taking the reins of her own process in ways that she hadnt before, it was written after the end of a relationship where she felt marginalized. Like on When Im Alone, Sweetness begins with a brief instrumental prelude, this time the spacy, part-electronic "intro" (featuring wordless vocals), before launching into "I Just Do!," a relatively sleek, tuneful example of early-2020s indie that gets noisy during the choruses. Things get a little grungier for the next couple tracks before girlpuppy lightens things up on the sparser, piano- and bass-driven "Windows," a track with a spring in its step despite its subject of missing a lost love. Sweetness is filled with contradictions like these -- and affection, regret, pride, and longing -- befitting the grieving of a relationship that she wasnt happy in. Harvey soon takes her ex to task on the confrontational "Since April," whose churning fuzz and relentless anguish is only softened by the singers girlish vocal tone. That song is followed by another contrast in the brushed snare and pedal steel of the more reflective (and Hartley-featuring) "Beaches," which finds her starting to forgive. Sweetness closes on the two-person "I Think I Did" (with Farrar), a song whose title and time signature changes reflect continued uncertainty that seems to continue beyond the fade-out. ~ Marcy Donelson

アトランタが拠点のガールパピーことベッカ・ハーヴェイによるセカンド・アルバム。ダイナミックなギター・サウンドを掻き鳴らす"I Just Do!"など、アヴリル・ラヴィーンのような00年代ポップ・ロックを彷彿とさせる音が随所で飛び出す。恋愛など自身の出来事を中心に扱った歌詞は、平易な言葉で複雑な感情の機微を描く巧みな言葉選びが光る。
bounce (C)近藤真弥