Bury Me at Makeout Creek Review

Trading the string section for a fuzz pedal did more for this writer than any amount of studio budget could have. Everything is smaller and everything hits harder. Townie is two minutes of noise and a chorus about wanting a body to belong to. First Love / Late Spring builds from an almost silent verse into a full band burst and then drops out again, and the line about a phone call in Japanese is the first time she used a specific detail to break a song open.

I Don't Smoke and Drunk Walk Home are ugly on purpose. Last Words of a Shooting Star closes with a woman cataloguing her own tidy apartment before a plane goes down. The recording is rough, the drums are thin and a couple of tracks are more idea than song. None of that matters much next to the arrival of the voice: unsentimental, precise, willing to be unattractive. This is where the real catalogue starts.