Passionate yet controlled, powerful yet quiet, introspective yet expressive, walking a tightrope between hope and a kind of quiet anxiety, New York-born, LA-based Meg Duffy returns with their distinctive, intimate experimental folk-rock-indie, with 12 circumspect, insecure yet intense love songs. The genuine joy of love and self-actualisation is constantly and tantalisingly balanced against the potential fear of losing it. Musically her style sits somewhere between Aimee Mann, Neko Case, and at times the brilliant, woozy oddness of the highly influential Cate Le Bon. On the part-gentle, part-crash percussion of opener More Today, Duffy sings: “Honey I think I love you more today / I think you might believe me / I know every word you say / Is tearing me apart.” And on the powerful, passionate Wheel of Change: “Don’t take it away just yet I need it now, more than ever”, and yet “I used to think that time was just a vessel for pain / Every second taken away from me / Now I look back on those years / Days lost to crippling fears.” Nubble is a beautiful, vividly poetic number with piano and interchanging guitar arpeggios: “Waves crash upon the dock light streaming through the fog.” Dead Rat is painfully restrained but oddly beautiful lo-fi. “Dead rat in my wall is rotting and there’s nothing I can do about it now / I want to pick up the phone and tell you that I love you.” A highlight is the catchy rock-pop of Bluebird of Happiness, filled with joy and tentative hope: “Bluebird of happiness loneliness is gone from me misery has no friend here I never thought I’d see the day / When you’d fly to me hold me tighter than a kite string you’ll be late for spring but won’t you stay through the winter?”. Jasmine Blossom is also a gorgeous, quieter, simmering, Cate Le Bon-like musing on another metaphor, while closer Living Proof deliciously fades into the evening of the record with gentle piano and guitar and these fabulously ambiguous, open-ended lines: “There is no good reason for the things we do / Like rain upon the asphalt / Your mother calling you an asshole / Maybe you’re the living proof / I never knew what love could do … I never knew.” Out on Fat Possum Records.
New to comment? It is quick and easy. You just need to login to Disqus once. All is explained in About/FAQs ...
Feel free to recommend more new songs and albums and comment below. You can also use the contact page, or find more on social media: Song Bar X, Song Bar Facebook. Song Bar YouTube, and Song Bar Instagram. Please subscribe, follow and share.
Song Bar is non-profit and is simply about sharing great music. We don’t do clickbait or advertisements. Please make any donation to help keep the Bar running: