Someone named Josephine is haunting Forever So, the debut LP from Australian indie folk four-piece Husky. "Josephine, I don't love her anymore," frontman Husky Gawenda sings on "Don't Tell Your Mother"; later, on "Farewell (in 3 Parts)", he sings, "there was a lot we didn't say, wasn't there, Josephine?" The rest of their story is told in fits and starts throughout Forever So; there's the three weeks spent in the motel by the sea, an unforeseen overnighter in a bus stop, the river in the woods where Gawenda washed away his sins. These vivid scenes and impressionistic details make for a surprisingly lifelike portrait of a love gone south, even as it poses as many questions as it answers. You may never quite get every last detail out of Husky, but you'll certainly get the picture.
Husky's music plays much like Gawenda's lyrics: spare one moment, bursting with feeling the next. Pitched somewhere between the pristine, pocket-orchestral feel of early Sufjan and the intricate, ever-changing popcraft of the Shins, they're preternaturally confident for a young band, piling on when needs be but just as willing to pull back to almost nothing.
There are shades of Paul Simon and, again, Sufjan dancing around the edges of Gawenda's high, clear voice, and his penchant for full sentences and story-songs sometimes brings to mind early Ben Gibbard. Although there's a slight storyteller's detachment to some of the less blatantly personal affairs here, when he's speaking from the heart, you'll know it. At first, Forever So almost seems too simplistic, just a couple of chords and some guy banging on about his ex. But once you've leaned into the record a few times and learned a little more about Josephine, what isn't said-- and, consequently, what isn't played-- becomes every bit as compelling as what is.
Forever So's resolutely overcast vibe grows a touch dreary around the three-quarter mark; Husky's tempos tend toward the deliberate, and they're most comfortable hanging out in a minor key, but after nine or 10 fairly maudlin affairs in a row, you may find yourself longing for a little respite. "Hundred Dollar Suit" proves a much-needed burst of energy in the back end, but it isn't quite enough to help shake the feeling that Forever So could've been more potent had they shaved off a few minutes of wandering. Such is heartbreak, I suppose: confusing, morose, and always running on a little longer than it should.
A few lines here and there miss their marks: amidst the lovelorn stuff that surrounds them, "I just killed a man, it doesn't feel real," from "How Do You Feel", or the fuck-off he gives his boss on "Don't Tell Your Mother", seem strikingly out of character. But that's just it: too many breakup albums couch personal matters in universal terms, but Gawenda smartly takes the opposite route. He allows for enough specificity to make his characters and the situations he puts them in feel very real while allowing for enough ambiguity-- helped along by his story's somewhat dodgy chronology-- to allow the sneaky feelings behind them to resonate well beyond all the particulars. Only twice does the name Josephine come up throughout Forever So, yet hardly a moment goes by where you can't feel the loss.
