Stephanie Cottingham was just 13 when she started writing songs and performing, and she was still a teenager when her band Ortolan recorded their debut LP with Daniel Smith for Sounds Familyre, and toured two continents with Danielson. Her years inform her craft but do not limit its scope. As the band-- which includes her sisters and sister-in-law-- backs her up with sympathetic arrangements built on early rock and contemporary indie pop, Cottingham expresses misgivings and uncertainties that accompany any person's search for self, no matter their age: "I need the answers for this," she sings on the deceptively sunny "Opposites", "but nobody knows how I'm supposed to say things when I don't even know how they go."
Such concerns, especially when expressed by a young woman not old enough to drink, are sometimes dismissed as naïve and inconsequential (see also: Taylor Swift, a fine songwriter often derided for lyrics that convey a similar perspective). While Cottingham may not have settled into her songwriting voice just yet, she definitely has something to say about her own insecurities and confusions, and moreover she has a seemingly contradictory means of saying it. Ortolan's most distinctive trait may be her deeply mannered vocals, which imply that, for her, performing means indulging certain protective eccentricities. Listen to her chew on a syllable like it's a pen cap, or stretch her vowels out like taffy. There's no way to spell out her pronunciation of the pronoun "I" phonetically. She's not an especially powerful singer-- she doesn't have much range or force-- but Cottingham manages to convey personality in her vocals. Her tics may turn off some listeners, but they reveal a confidence that Cottingham swears she doesn't have. "If I hit the wrong chord, please don't take offense," she sings on "Mirror Image". "I'm doing this more, but I don't mean to do the things that I do."
Despite her protestations, the music itself contains no such flubs, though it lacks the rawness of her songwriting. As produced by Smith, Ortolan can be resourceful and a bit too controlled. "Once" sounds like a sped-up "Earth Angel (Will You Be Mine)", which underscores the fairy-tale quality of the lyrics, while the rising keyboard line on "Just Like Me" is as much a hook as the vocal melody. Ortolan never really cut loose on Time on a String, which means they don't risk quite as much as Cottingham does, but they do provide a bubbly backdrop for her inner conflict, so that when her songwriting wavers-- as on "Insist for More", about a bratty child, or on "Be So Bold", about her own bookishness-- her family has her back, another protective scrim against the world. Even so, an intriguing friction between boldness and hesitation illuminates most of these songs, which makes closer "Anything" sound all the more triumphant when Cottingham sings, "I'm ready for anything you give me, I'm ready for everything."
