Emily Reo’s 2009 debut Minha Gatinha may have been lo-fi, but it didn’t obscure the Brooklyn artist's keen sense for contagious hooks. Her 2013 LP Olive Juice found Reo peeking out from behind the fog of reverb; her intentions as a songwriter seemed more defined, but there was still the sense of something eager to burst through. On her new album Only You Can See It, Reo has shattered all inhibitions. Here she paints in bright and bold brushstrokes, presenting her most ambitious and electrifying collection of songs to date.
Only You Can See It is a massive, far-reaching body of work that has all of the dimensions and sparkle of a finely cut diamond. “Strawberry” is an undeniable rallying cry for any woman who’s had to put up with pedantic male naysayers (spoiler alert: all of us).“Your eyes close when you talk about champagne,” she sneers, a precise putdown that brings to mind Rob Lowe’s sleazy TV producer “educating” Cassandra on the fraudulence of sparkling white wine in Wayne's World. We’ve all met that guy. “My eyes roll back so far I see my brain/And there is so much you try to explain that I don’t wanna know,” Reo groans.
Reo is masterful at rendering an entire scene with just a few words, a skill she likely honed as a visual artist. Her phrasing is brief but evocative, allowing us to taste “cinnamon cherry” Septembers and experience the physical manifestations of anxiety: “Braiding silk on my spine/Face burned in flickering light.” And then there’s “Charlie,” the most devastating song ever written about a cat. Reo lost the titular kitty a few summers ago to a rare disease, and the images she’s summoned from his ashes are truly haunting. She sings about “hair on the carpet” and “healing old scratches,” depicting the physical presence that often outlives the ones we lose. “When the bulb burns out the glass stays warm,” Reo laments. I’m not crying. You’re crying.
What is perhaps most gratifying about Only You Can See It is that it is Reo’s vision in toto. She wrote, produced, mixed, engineered, and recorded the album, and she performed a number of the instruments credited. What results is a record in the spirit of Grimes’ Art Angels—a sprawling opus from a pop polymath. It couldn’t be more fitting that the image of a butterfly surfaces on Reo’s song “Fleur,” as her evolution has very much mirrored one.
