Review Summary: A proficient new talent stumbles through her debut set.
Indiana native Taylor Bickett is a talented young artist with tons of potential and great ideas. Her debut full-length record
Nothing I Can't Undo is living proof. It's always interesting when someone dares to lose sight of the shore and begin a voyage. For Bickett, hers is one comprised of quaint folk-pop soundscapes and technically masterful, if not overwhelmingly eye-popping, vocal flourishes. She has an insanely pretty and gentle voice, which can nestle into a dreamy composition like hand in glove. Rustic guitars are abound, and the percussive elements help round everything out without escalating things to a height where they lose their intended intimacy or tenderness. Simply put, I think Bickett has a lot going for her at this inaugural juncture of her career.
Invariably, though, there are bound to be some honest mistakes and pitfalls when you put that first batch of songs to record, if for no other reason than you have no existing foundation to build off of. And Bickett certainly runs into a few on this album. Opening stanza "The Arsonist" presents the first of such; while Bickett is a capable interpreter, you get this inexplicable feeling that you've heard her somewhere before. Could it be Taylor Swift she's emulating, with her decidedly plaintive phrasing? Is it the overly diaristic musings and occasionally spoken style that sound like they were ripped straight off of the indie pop soundtrack to the 2007 film
Juno? Perhaps Billie Eilish, because of her sometimes hushed tonality? Sh*t, even Avril Lavigne comes to mind, due to the subtle undercurrent of angst that's ostensibly present. Swift definitely seems like the most apt comparison of the bunch, but more so in this case because of the clunky lyrics shoe-horned in (entire first verse) and passages that seem to exist to sound smart without actually conveying depth. "Can you be broke and a sellout," Beckett ponders later on. Not to imbue what I'm sure is earnest writing with an uncharitable assessment, but when you've heard Taylor Swift say "I was a piece of cheese, you were the grill" so many times, you become desensitized to the specific archetype of pop that songs like this at least tacitly oscillate towards. It's more of an indictment on the subgenre than on Beckett herself, who does enchant in short bursts elsewhere on the track.
While "If Only," one of the album's singles and which follows on the heels of "The Arsonist," is more of a window into the breadth of Bickett's vocal aerobics, its chorus is quarter-baked structurally, and lacks both the chance to flesh itself out, or to compensate for Bickett's innocuously duff execution. When her voice gets to breathe on its own, it sounds, perhaps by design, pitchy, and Bickett gives the two-lyric refrain a good extra twelve syllables. The bridge is the highlight, even if it's the most frustrating component, because Bickett sings with such conviction and fullness during this pocket of the song. You walk away hoping you see more of that as we press on. "Politician" offers a nice peek at Bickett's more interesting artistic inclinations. Pairing slickly scant guitar licks, a nostalgic pop template and an endearing vocal, I think the only thing this one is missing is a mildly louder background to propel it onto the dance floor. I can fondly recall so many electropop hits from the 2000s in this, and while I don't mind the acoustic, country-adjacent presentation, I think this could have been a club banger in another life.
Just when we're getting our fingertips around some consistently adept and borderline brilliant material, we hit into a patch of songs that each come with their own issues. On "Firefly Collector", Bickett's voice is clear and in control of the proceedings to start, before the chorus hits, and the guitars and mixing suddenly get much louder and actively drown her out. On the bridge, her vocals are almost unintelligible. On the title track, we see more of those unflattering tendencies from "The Arsonist" that conjure unfavorable reminders of Swift, namely the less than compelling and conversational themes and awkward run-on lyrics that contrast imagery seemingly for the sake of doing so, rather than driving home a serious statement. Each song is passable, just not with flying colors.
"Driving in the Dark" might be the first steep nosedive into trouble on this thing. The structure, and Bickett's singing, are fairly commendable, but the passages are concerningly, and pervasively, violent and dramatic. Pretty clearly lamenting a love gone sour, I have a hard time figuring out if Bickett is attempting to reclaim agency from an abuser, or accidentally admitting that she hurt them just as much. "Venice", which closes the album, boasts of an alluringly glistening vocal turn from Bickett, but accompanied by lyrical content that doesn't really seem to mean anything. "They say the love is worth the losing, and the losing will show you just how much you loved," she remarks, without really giving the listener an idea of what she's referring to. Swift again comes to mind, as she's famous for planting Easter eggs in her songs and encouraging discourse on what clues exist, but they require a meta-knowledge of the lore that only an artist as uber-famous as her can realistically have. Bickett is a newbie. It's here where one struggles most, in my estimation, to get a read on her.
I think Bickett is a perfectly serviceable singer, but her writing and backing arrangements struggle to achieve sustained cohesion or interest. There are anecdotally decent pieces to work with, but not enough to fill up a canvas. Since this is her first time out, I try to be lenient. Her eventual sophomore album will be something to watch out for, to see if she can
really put it all together. But the fact of the matter is that there isn't much here to actually put together. Her artistic trajectory, based solely off this bumpy first act, doesn't strike me as spelling out mainstream success.
Nothing I Can't Undo is just sort of
good.
