Something old: Alina Simone's debut EP begins and ends with the Ukrainian singer's timeless voice. It's bleached and pitted like igneous rock, at times cold and remote yet tempered by the ennui of her formative years in suburban Massachusetts and the grubby glitter of New York. None of this is literal-- geography influences lyrical purview, not the innate qualities of a voice-- but since the brief intersections of divergent personal histories are of such interest to Simone, one looks to her own when attempting to understand the provenance of her tremulous coos and tortured glissandos. There's something in them that's not quite pain-- more like tension, the countervailing gravities of too many clinging roots. "When you fall in love with two people/ Choose whoever you knew first/ Because history is important," she sings tellingly, on the murky, two-toned strum of the title track.
Something new: Simone rejects the generically folksy strum that keeps many talented singers stuck on the coffee-shop circuit, choosing instead to wrap her smoldering voice around dark, fractured arrangements that tremble on the verge of vanishing entirely-- guitars that begin in two-note figures soon settle into one, rare embellishments like farfisa and trombone seem to come from far away, and percussion tiptoes in geological time, when it appears at all. Steve Revitte, who's best known for his production work with Liars and JSBX, should be credited for keeping the recording unfettered and spacious. If you close your eyes, you can imagine that you're hearing the music in a dim, sparsely populated nightclub, and closing your eyes is recommended: It really is prettier in the dark.
Something borrowed: Cat Power's whole damn steez, most of Shannon Wright's, and a little of PJ Harvey's.
Something blue: Blueness permeates Prettier in the Dark-- the deep indigo implicit in the sprawling-night-sky arrangements, the pining blue notes scattered throughout Simone's diaphragm-plumbing intonation, and her understatedly dejected lyrics. The plodding dirge "Louisiana" remembers a trip to the beach with an ex-lover; "Siberia" imagines disappearing into a pure bluish-white; "Cash America Pawn" is all tired waitresses and cars broken down on access roads. The hollered invocation of America at it's conclusion is the most forceful vocal on the record; it's also a bit silly, as the song switches from quiet recollection to spleeny protest for no discernible reason, and makes one thankful for the album proper's relative restraint.
