With modular synths growing densely around her multitracked voice, this album from Pacific-coastal artist Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith becomes as lush, heady – and occasionally trying – as a rainforest. It’s an ambitious record in four parts, with each quarter representing a different emotional phase of a human lifespan.
Her melodies share the courtly poise of English folksong and the psychedelic naivety of Animal Collective – they accurately evoke the blitheness of youth in the album’s first half, but also, less fortunately, its directionlessness. The textural pleasures of tracks such as I Am Learning and A Kid – full of wonky tiki kitsch – are muted by the vocal lines which, given starker backing, would be embarrassingly underwritten. Things improve in the later, more reflective tracks, as the rhythms and melodies simplify and stretch out, particularly on the beautiful closing track To Feel Your Best, underpinned by a faint, watery dancehall beat.
