Last year, Lily Konigsberg said, “I want to write songs that get stuck in people’s heads for the rest of their lives.” As one-third of the ramshackle art-punk band Palberta, that specific kind of stickiness might not sound like Top 40 hits composed by a professional songwriter consortium. Yet the lifelong New Yorker has explored the fringes of the mainstream for as long as she’s made music, both in her solo work and with avant-pop duo Lily and Horn Horse. This cheekily titled compilation collects Konigsberg's recent string of EPs, showcasing her hyper-melodic hooks and disarmingly honest lyrics while remaining left of the dial.
Konigsberg formed her first band at age 9, gathering together a group of girls in her neighborhood of Park Slope and banging on Tupperware until they made enough money for pizza. “Basically I was born and immediately started wanting to be a rock star—like, no other option,” she admitted. Konigsberg first performed solo at 15, before her confidence was boosted by winning a five-borough battle of the bands contest. While studying at Bard College in 2013, she met her future Palberta bandmates Nina Ryser and Anina Ivry-Block when all three were booked to perform separately at the same show.
Since linking up as a trio, Palberta’s free-flowing collaboration has resulted in an onslaught of music beginning with their lo-fi debut LP, My Pal Berta. Yet Konigsberg has explained how her solo work is both more meticulous and deeply personal. “When I’m writing alone I am way more of a perfectionist,” she has said. “It’s also a very solitary and quiet process at first. It’s harder in that I have to be alone with my brain, but it is really crazy and fun.” This introspection results in plainspoken lyrics about Konigsberg’s love and loss, accepting the end of unnamed relationships while longing for the intimacy that is absent from her life.
The Best of Lily Konigsberg Right Now includes songs from three solo releases, alongside unreleased tracks and bedroom demos. Arranged by mood instead of chronological order, it begins with 2018’s 4 picture tear EP before drifting into 2020’s It’s Just Like All the Clouds, and concluding with Konigsberg’s songs from 2017’s Good Time Now, a split album with Andrea Schiavelli. Early highlight “Rock and Sin” shows off her homespun arrangements with a capella vocal loops sung in the round, before “7 Smile” introduces a sputtering drum machine and fried Neil Hagerty-style guitar solos from Ivry-Block. “The point is not exactly where I am/The point is what I’m not,” Konigsberg repeats like an affirmation.
Konigsberg’s songwriting remains sharp as knives. The peppy indie-pop of “I Said” exploits alliteration in some of her funniest couplets: “Crushing all the bugs that I find in my hairbrush/Crusty but harmless guys/Clustering in a circle.” “Roses” ends with the defeated line “I used to be so good at boys” before switching gears into “North Porsche,” Konigsberg’s most slyly amorous song about following a crush in the speeding sports car of her dreams. “It’s Just Like All The Clouds” is a dancefloor jam with warbled Auto-Tuned lyrics focus on her decision to leave a relationship in the rearview mirror: “Now that you don’t want me, I don’t need your time.”
On the surface, nothing here is as defiantly normal as “Owe Me.” On this previously unreleased song, Konigsberg sings with the starry-eyed romanticism of Carly Rae Jepsen, while Water From Your Eyes’ Nate Amos contributes swerving keyboards and chiming 808s. It could be a bona fide Billboard smash if it wasn’t for the strange moment when Konigsberg thanks an imaginary audience for coming to her show and they respond with canned handclaps. Even at her most straightforward, she can’t resist commenting on the idea at a self-conscious remove, just like this album’s title. It keeps her off the radar, but it’s where she makes the greatest hits.
Buy: Rough Trade
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