Katy Goodman can usually be seen playing bass and adding syrupy harmonies to Vivian Girls' spiky guitar songs. Her voice and melodic bass lines lend a sense of fragility to that band, so it's no surprise to hear that carried over into her side project, La Sera. Here, Vivian Girls' distorted guitar and haze is replaced by a bare sound, stripped to its core elements, while Goodman's voice becomes central, sometimes double-tracked.
The opening jangle of "Beating Heart" builds with purpose, slow and precise as Goodman sings above clean guitar chimes. Honeyed vocal harmonies stream in, collecting these simple elements, giving the song an ebb and flow that recalls stately, more minimal guitar bands such as Galaxie 500. When a distorted guitar cuts in toward the end, it feels all the more powerful for the restraint surrounding it.
It's this kind of heft that carries the first-- and best-- quarter of the album, where Goodman uses simplicity as an airy foundation for her lovelorn twee-pop songs. It's a trick showcased well on "You're Going to Cry", with its weary lyric pitted against off-the-cuff acoustic guitar strums and sparse drumming. Something in her enunciation on the song, not allowing any syllable to fade away, sounds quite innocent and childlike, making for an interesting contrast with the seen-it-all-before theme of the verses.
There's a subtle 1960s girl-group influence throughout, but there are also hints of the folk-pop of that era on "I Promise You", as a sweet organ line props up the end of the song, sounding almost like a flute. These interesting moments, living in the space in the music, allow it to feel blithe and easy.
The carefreeness that lends La Sera's better songs a sense of spontaneity shows up some of its weaker moments. "Left This World" feels thin and more like a foundation or fleeting idea than something fully formed. That song is typical of the latter half of the record and, despite being made up of very short songs, still feels like a slog. "Lift Off", at one minute long doesn't stick around long enough to command much attention, except to note the odd-sounding chorus harmony. This sort of brevity and emptiness makes the tail end of the album, already short at 26 minutes, feel throwaway and hasty. It's hard not to feel, therefore, that this would have made a much better EP, losing some of the shapeless songs that drag down the momentum and charm of the record.
