The tape hiss that courses through nearly every song on Julie Sokolow's debut, Something About Violins, suggests what tape hiss usually suggests: a live-setting intimacy testifying to some sort of Luddite authenticity, whether in the recording (a basement four-track) or the instrumentation (a yard-sale turntable). Sokolow, a Pittsburgh native living in New York City, plays up this lo-fi sensibility, keeping instruments to a minimum (typically, just her voice and guitar) and basking in that airy hiss to create a sound that's not unlike early Cat Power or Julie Doiron.
But lo-fi as a movement, to which Sokolow alludes only tangentially, strikes me as an aesthetic of circumstance: Artists with limited access to technology, from Guided by Voices to the Grifters to Daniel Johnston, have turned that fuzzy sound into a viable genre. In this setting, Sokolow's guitar sounds textured, its high end tinnily bright and its low end reverberating roomily. Her voice sounds dreamily nuanced, personable yet mysterious as she contemplates unrequited love on "Your Wrists" and her fragile emotional state on "Expanse's Net".
But credit Sokolow with self-awareness: For her, lo-fi isn't a result of outsider circumstances, but an artistic choice. After all, she recorded these songs on her Mac G4's built-in mic. Something About Violins adroitly upends lo-fi's expectations of live performance, its songs full of artful touches and sophisticated layering of sounds. "Alternations" begins with a recital-quality piano; then she begins singing; then she begins layering multiple vocal tracks in an odd chorale. And then enters what sounds like a roomful of toy monkeys playing a roomful of miniature cymbals. Meanwhile, "Solid" is anything but. After a hushed verse, the song distorts in soft, quavering static, her words barely breaking the surface. "End March" incorporates a spoken-word verse that splinters into several voices, stitched together by a martial snare and delicate piano.
As confident as the album is, Sokolow realizes the potential ambiguity of sound and uses that to her advantage: "I shook on the phone and it sounded like laughter," she sings matter-of-factly on "Expanse's Net". "Broke plates in alarm and it sounded like clapping." She's unafraid to portray herself in a less-than-flattering light, to candidly expose "how ugly I can be", as she states in "Pictures", without sounding self-absorbed or blandly confessional. Instead, she comes across as conflicted, her emotions as unresolved as her music, but her tough-minded, self-reflective lyrics give shape and solidity to these mercurial songs. That may be the most intriguing aspect of Something About Violins: her lyrics explain why her music sounds the way it does.
