Much to everyone’s horror — or, at least, mine — Spotify Wrapped dropped earlier this week. Aside from learning that my nighttime vibe is apparently sorrow cottagecore somber, I was pleasantly surprised to see one of my favorite lesser-known artists creep into my Top 5: Barrie.
I previously wrote for What’s Curation, a great blog by Nikhil Rajagopalan, about my first brush with Barrie during my freshman year of college. At the time, Barrie was a five-piece band fronted by Lindsay Barrie herself, but in the time between their debut album (Happy to Be Here) and Barbara, the group disbanded, leaving their namesake at the helm. Their debut, released in 2019, is formidable musically, an earnest collection of buoyant soft-pop numbers. Happy to Be Here is easy listening: delightful sound with little sentimental substance.
But Barbara, in congruence with Lindsay Barrie’s new solo odyssey, adds a depth that the group’s former iteration sorely lacked. During the time of the album’s creation, Lindsay reports, she met her now-wife, moved home to Ipswich, MA, and watched her father die of rapidly progressing lung cancer. “Barbara isn’t an album specifically about grief or love”, the artist reported, “it’s just an album where I let myself feel my emotions. That’s something I’d never done before in music”.
Photo by Alexa Viscius
Written, recorded, engineered, and produced entirely by Lindsay herself, Barbara feels like a top-to-bottom experiment for the artist. The musical geniality remains through most of the album’s first half: songs like “Jersey” and “Jenny” are a welcome reminiscence for fans of the group’s old sound, a reminiscence of the tender pop that first incited listeners. But Lindsay seeks to subvert expectations in other places: “Frankie” takes a faster pace while infusing some of the emotionality which permeates Barrie’s new venture. Here, Lindsay voices frustration with the very pace she implements into the song, the fast-moving world around her and what it demands: “Wait for the break when we get some rain / swim in the creeks that the New Deal laid / can’t break even but can’t complain / pushed right back to try it again”.
Songs like “Quarry” further Barrie’s sonic experimentation, a track characterized by its winding, rubbery synth lines and punctuating beat: “I’ve got a different kind of problem / how will I clean up my mess?”.
Lindsay, despite boasting a newfound emotionality in her songwriting, only seems to delve entirely into sorrow in fractured moments. “Harp 2”, a flurry of strumming guitars, plays like an anthem of insecurity and the desperation it begets: “He’s gonna do right, he’s gonna turn it back around / I never looked right, but do you love me now?”. (Been there.)
Barbara, in all honesty, is not a perfect album; its experimentation wavers from time to time, leaving the impression of a deer stumbling on its own legs. But Barrie’s solo debut is gripping and empathetic, and most importantly, it’s willing to try. It lives between unabashed declarations of love (“Dig”) and impassioned goodbyes (“Bloodline”); it makes space, for the first time, to really say something.
Check out the master playlist on Spotify!
"Aside from learning that my nighttime vibe is apparently sorrow cottagecore somber, "
Lol. Awesome. At this point, I think Spotify just throws a bunch of genres into a blender as sees what comes out.
I'm feeling a bit envious of all the Spotify Wrapped summaries.
I share my account with our 25yo son. I listen to a wide variety of stuff a few times, while he has a smaller set of favourites/playlists which he plays A LOT.
So, my 'most listened to song' this year is, apparently, 'Fire Escape' by Call Me Karizma (which I just took a first listen to - not bad!)
But he (rather than me!) has got 'Jackie Down the Line' by Fontaines D.C. sitting at #4, so at least I'm still managing to hold some influence!
Tim - challenge69.substack.com