After a series of collaborative and more experimental projects, the American artist’s first full singer-songwriter solo LP since 2015’s remarkable Carrie & Lowell is just as exquisite, delicate, tender, and beautifully heartbreaking. It’s particularly pointed and emotional, as Stevens is in recovery from autoimmune disease and is still learning to walk again. Largely put together at home, his distinctively melancholy and beautiful voice stands out, with some added guest backing vocalists, and plays most of the instruments, though Bryce Dessner plays acoustic and electric guitar on the song Shit Talk. The album is also accompanied by a 48-page book of art and essays. Several songs bring an intimate fragility, but can also burst out into voluminous sound and texture, this pattern set off in opener Goodbye Evergreen. All 10 tracks are gems, but particularly A Running Start, Will Anybody Ever Love Me?, the aforementioned epic Shit Talk, Genuflecting Ghost, So You Are Tired and the closer, a cover of Neil Young’s There’s A World. Certainly one of the year’s highlights. Out on Asthmatic Kitty.
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