For a singer whose voice sounds like an amber flame, Molly Sarlé hasn’t always been so sure about singing. Friendship led her to folk trio Mountain Man, where she, Amelia Meath, and Alexandra Sauser-Monnig entwined their vocals into uncannily intimate, honey-tipped harmonies. But if their lauded 2010 debut, Made the Harbor, and later tour supporting Feist seemed like a clear path forward, Sarlé had her doubts about a career in music.
A break, a Zen center, and Sarlé’s brief pursuit of acting haven’t fully abated those doubts. “I’m far from knowing/What I’m doing here,” she sings on “Passenger Side,” from her debut solo album Karaoke Angel. She craves perspective, acknowledging her penchant for “looking for a bird’s eye view in my rearview mirror,” as her voice dips in register and an electric guitar echoes cavernously around her. The vantage may never broaden, but Sarlé’s come to see the magic in telling your own story as opposed to performing other people’s.
Sarlé studied performance theory in college, and shades of that framework appear throughout Karaoke Angel, which bridges the sepia warmth of the Laurel Canyon sound with the rooted hymns of Appalachian folk. On “Almost Free,” she performs a doting daughter for her father, stretching the boundaries of her affection: “So I tell my dad what he wants to hear/I say ‘I love you,’ say ‘I need you here.’” Desire becomes a tangled performance on “This Close.” “Are we really this close, or is it just the drugs?” Sarlé asks, drawing out her phrasing and briefly luxuriating in pleasure, even if it’s tied to a destructive romance.
Finding the space to fit Sarlé’s expansive voice required three years and three recording attempts—in Los Angeles, Durham, and finally Woodstock. The album finally coalesced at Dreamland, the former church turned studio, under the guidance of producer Sam Evian. Evian has said recording Sarlé felt like making a documentary, and viewed that way, her voice threads Karaoke Angel with a narrative cohesion. Absent the surrounding vocals of Mountain Man, or much instrumental framing beyond guitar, synths, and occasional drums, Sarlé’s voice comes into full frame.
Performing for others becomes dangerous when our mask starts to reflect someone else’s needs. On the witty “Suddenly,” Sarlé stumbles into a moment of clarity. “I don’t know why/But suddenly I am exactly what I wanna be,” she sings, her voice radiating. But instead of internalizing that confidence, she uses it to please her lover. “After giving you head/I get the fuck up out of bed,” she sings, as her doubled voice nears a howl. The tempo stumbles, as if Sarlé grows weary of performing what Norman Mailer once called “a mirror of pleasure,” and she refocuses on her own cravings: “Melt some butter in a pan/Throw some cheese between two pieces of bread.” Whatever glow of self-recognition she felt before the bedroom fades. “I don’t know why/But suddenly I am no longer what I wanna be,” she sings, chafing at the frustration.
Sarlé fluctuates between knowing who she is and what she wants, and convincing herself that others hold those keys. “I wanna tell you if you lead me back to myself/I won’t go running to anyone else,” she sings on “Human,” her billowy vocals making the loaded promise seem effortless. Her journey to understanding—that long drive with only a rearview mirror—may have its limits, but storytelling offers a space for control. On Karaoke Angel, Sarlé wields her voice with power, finding actualization in the act of telling. On “Dreams,” her whisper works its own pace against winding synths. “I’ve been working on a version of the truth/I think you’re gonna like it,” she sings. “Call it a song you can sing along to.”
