Hers

Written a few years after the events that inspired it, Hers finds English singer/songwriter Matt Maltese reflecting on the one that got away. While breakups are far from original subject matter for the songwriting art form, the experience never really goes out of style, and Maltese approaches it with a level of intimacy and wound picking reserved for the truly tormented. He accentuates all the heartache and self-doubt with lush chamber pop arrangements and a timeless sense of melody that give the album (his sixth), a 20th century glow thats part vocal-era Las Vegas residency, part Brill Building, and part romantic movie theme. Its his first entirely self-produced album since 2019s Krystal. Maltese may, in fact, have had movie serenades on the mind, as he opens Hers with the mood-setting "Arthouse Cinema," a melancholy meditation on escaping into movies ("Such a cliche I became/Frequenting theaters every single day"). The songs accompaniment includes piano, a light rhythm section, vibraphone, and woodwinds including a clarinet soloist. Before the record gets deep into the aftermath of the relationship, the love song "Buses Replace Trains" then draws us into the romance with tender vocals and a sweeping arrangement including strings, along with midcentury-eliciting lyrics like "Buses replace trains/Highways replace lanes/Theres no replacing you and I/Oh, Id like to see them try." By track three, hes buying her birthday gifts and giving them to strangers ("Happy Birthday"). The albums evocative musicality notwithstanding, lyrics can be unexpectedly contemporary, as Maltese manages to make elegant work of the occasional expletive and tracks such as the perpetually horny "Anytime, Anyplace, Anyhow" and the jealous "Always Some MF," a slow jam thats plaintive rather than angry. Also included on the songwriters journey through misery is "Holiday from Yourself," in which sighing backing singers and a horn section color realizations that no amount of traveling will help ("Gibraltar, to Malta, maybe to Spain/Verona, Nebraska, its all in vain"), and another film reference, "Eternal Darkness of the Spotted Mind," which faces the reality that "No machine erases you from my life." The set ends on "Everybodys Just as Crazy as Me," a sparer piano ballad that tries to find perspective while bemoaning that life simply goes on. Full of memorably wistful melodies as well as potentially relatable struggles, Hers feels like an instant classic, if one thats also outside of time. ~ Marcy Donelson