New Jersey singer-songwriter Donna Missal has supported both King Princess and Lewis Capaldi on tour, and fans of both will find something to enjoy in her strident queer torch songs. Missal, 29, was evidently raised on traditional rock and country. One of five siblings, she was home-schooled by her parents, with an education rooted in music (her grandmother was a songwriter in the 1950s; her dad was an 80s musician). As she did on her 2018 debut album, This Time, Missal sticks closely to her biggest influences on Lighter: Sheryl, Shania, and Stevie.
True to its title, Lighter is full of high-intensity moments primed for a stadium crowd to whip out phones. It’s a raw break-up record, from the sparse desperation of rock ballads like Carefully, to the vulnerable vibrato of folk song Bloom. Missal’s deep husk of a voice is an immense instrument, and while she does a lot of belting, it’s at its most impactful when she shows a spectrum of restraint and power within one song, as she does on the smouldering Just Like You, and the acoustic guitar-peppered opener How Does It Feel? (the latter feels made for summer movie credits).
Missal sounds strangely retro – though she floats somewhere between the liberatory pop of King Princess and the gravelly ballads of Capaldi, it’s hard to see where she fits in the 2020 zeitgeist. It’s in those untempered emotional moments that she makes her singular presence felt.
