A gently ironic title, but no doubting beauty of the sound, reminiscent of the late, great Elliott Smith, this new gem of a lo-fi LP is full of mildly tragic, sensitive, thoughtful 14 short numbers by the Philadelphia high falsetto singer-songwriter. On the simple acoustic opener I Wanna Feel Pretty he sings in a matter-of-fact way how “I got a new job and it’s not too sweet / Last night I got robbed as I walked through the streets at a quarter til three when no one’s around except someone like me,” and “I checked into rehab, 7 o’clock and tried not to be bad before I escaped through a hole in my sock then half of the place followed me to the rocks.” Looking Out Your Window also has a beautiful sound with a grim scenario: “Dark room in a hospital bed / I’m shrinking out the window.” The finger-picking Mary/Dreaming is about forgetting to visit to his Aunt Mary “before she went away”. Gentle Love, with simple percussion and piano is vocally especially Smith-like, with a gorgeous whistling section and is followed by Frog, a short keyboard number in which he asks forgiveness for his faults. Another standout is No Evil, a double-edged love song about imagining the worst things, and the slow, gorgeous, vivid So Mean with delicious vocal harmonies: “I know it would hurt to sting but I’m paranoid of everything / What I left in the morning /I had loved when the evening melted into sand.” Painful but exquisite. Out on Dead Oceans.
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