Fans of breathy choruses and morose piano lines, step right this way. Multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter Beck Goldsmith smothers her third album in layers of delicate vocals and ever-so-light piano and strings, to a calming, albeit slightly anaesthetising, effect. Recorded over the course of a year with producer Jon Dix, Lustre & Curve chronicles the disintegration of Goldsmith’s marriage. The result is a folk-tinged breakup album that never quite punches to the gut with emotional heft. Goldsmith references Sharon Van Etten as an influence, but her songwriting lacks Van Etten’s searing angst and confessional pain, tiptoeing more into polite dejection than the sort of all-encompassing bleakness one might expect from so personal an album. Vocally she recalls Daughter’s Elena Tonra and Cat Power’s Chan Marshall, showcasing her ear for melody on the beautifully eerie For All You Saw. Elsewhere, the album falls victim to a midtempo lull, but the bare bones of Lustre & Curve hint at Goldsmith’s songwriting abilities.
