Bloomington, Ind. singer-songwriter Amy Oelsner describes her new album Elastic as “either her second or her ninth, depending on how you count.” She has been making and independently and releasing albums as Amy O since 2004, but put out her label debut with last year’s Arrow. Elastic finds her in flux; she is developing a fuller sound and recording at a professional studio for the first time, while still drawing from the lo-fi bedroom pop that defined Arrow and the releases before it. Oelsner says Elastic is the result of learning to take up space as a female musician, noting, “I always had an aversion to being a girl onstage with a guitar singing quiet songs. There’s nothing wrong with that at all, but I always knew I wanted to do something with a bit more volume, a bit more anger.”
Opener “Lavender Night” is undoubtedly loud and angry. The song was written after a trip to the doctor to have a lump examined, the anxiety of reckoning with one’s own mortality propels the song forward. Though there was doubt and sorrow throughout Arrow—many of the songs were “inspired by the death of a close friend”—the best moments on Elastic intensify those emotions, weaving them through feverish instrumentals and clearer, foregrounded vocals. When she sang, “You’re gonna be okay” on Arrow’s ”Deep Throat,” the song felt restorative, assurance that she is healing. But on “Lavender Night,” when she concedes, “Another bullet dodged for now,” there is foreboding in her voice as she grapples with the reality that comfort is fleeting, often sandwiched between moments of crushing doubt.
Still, Amy O hasn’t abandoned her starry-eyed wonder. Arrow is marked by rendezvous at the arcade, city lights that look like fireflies, drinking coffee dark, and music videos filmed in grassy fields. “David,” a song that comes towards the end of Elastic, abandons distortion for plucky, clean guitar that allows Oelsner’s falsetto space to croon a lullaby of advice: “Under the water nothing is real/When you are older, you’ll know the deal.” Open flowers sigh and summer is a wonder on “Cherry Blossom,” and “Sunday Meal” leaves Oelsner feeling, “like a bug in a field/Silver shimmering.” Imagery is often repeated on the album. Of the twelve songs on Elastic, for example, five reference dreaming, a motif that can certainly be evocative if properly substantiated, but that loses meaning when used so casually and so often. When Oelsner pastes tired motifs into her lyrics without building upon or contextualizing them, she asks the listener to do the work of identifying with hollow shells of grandiose concepts.
The harmonization found in Arrow takes center stage on Elastic, adding complexity and vigor to the sound while preserving the yearning in her voice. On “Spill,” an album highlight, she layers her vocals, singing, “I’ve gotta find myself a way out of here,” creating moments of dissonance followed by a delicious resolution. “Sunday Meal”, a song written in the wake of her grandmother’s death, decoupages backing vocals with a chorus that gets faster upon repetition, a dizzying rumination how quickly the feeling of home can slip away. Sometimes Oelsner’s enthusiastic layering paired with such abstract lyrics becomes disorienting. The harmonization on “Untouchable Heart” feels overcrowded, and the distortion and synths on “Spacey Feeling” are noisy, easily overpowering a chorus comprised largely of the word “moon.”
The moments that work best are when the instrumentation and vocals distill singular, cohesive emotions. Her most literal lyrics are often the strongest—a request to look in the fridge for food, the pressing need to escape, a freak out in the car ameliorated by stopping to get lime La Croix. Oelsner uses new instrumentation to express old anger, longing, and fear. Though she occasionally missteps, the transliteration process is a captivating one to witness.
