Review Summary: It's hard to love me back
“Honey” is a perfect Laura Stevenson song. I say ‘a’ not in the sense that it’s one of many (although it is) but in the sense that it takes everything that makes her music endearing and puts it in a perfect little box with a perfect little bow and a perfect little tag. It opens melodramatic; soft finger picking, voice echos, tangible woe. The pace quickens, drums scatter and march through a brief chorus before the bottom falls out. The bottom always falls out with Stevenson’s music, right around the bridge, in her perfect songs. That’s her play before the harmonies hit and build and the crescendo soars and can’t remember even where you started. Musical dynamics at their finest.
This was our first taste of
Late Great earlier this year, an album that proves itself to be entirely about the bottom falling out. Calling it a ‘breakup’ album feels disingenuous, as it translates as more of a reckoning of emotions and cathartic release than anything else sharing the title, but ultimately that’s what we’ve got here. Each song lyrically tackles a different obstacle; an unhelpful thought that’s kept you up at night (“I Couldn’t Sleep”) or comparisons to other couples who clearly shouldn’t have outlasted you (“Not Us”). It examines them with introspection and grace, but doesn’t shy away from the honest self-blame that every outsider would point to as unhelpful and, in most cases, just plain wrong.
There’s no doubt that Stevenson’s songwriting has kept its strength through the years, and it’s refreshing to hear her delivering more variety across the course of a full album.
Late Great swells, blisters, limps, and glides in equal parts. Earworms abound. There’s cohesiveness that shouts back toward her early days and it’s in the dynamics that the closers here land all the harder. You believe her claims of closure in “Late Great” and the resolute reprise of “#1 (2)”. Even with the haunting refrain of “Middle Love” lingering, you know there's another side to these moments of the bottom falling.
And I can’t fathom
How I’ll get to my car
Late Great is a triumph over heartache and another feather in the cap of a singer-songwriter who has never truly missed.
