Cooking Vinyl – 2021
“If I’m going to be someone that I believe in/ If I’m going to be someone that people like/I’ve had all the time I need to think it over – I’ve got to be sober. I’m gonna be sober, alright?”
I thought I would open this review with the part of the record that made me a Lucy Spraggan fan.
You see, it’s one thing to write “personal songs.” Songwriters who can’t cope with their own life experiences or communicate their feelings about them in another way write songs about them. So-called “introspection” (I might, sometimes, call it vanity), has been central to songwriting for generations before the first Spotify stream. It’s another thing, though, to record the changes you’ve gone through as a measure of accountability, in the apparent hopes that you won’t change back.
Lucy Spraggan will never be able to live down Choices.
Written more like a photo album than an audio one Spraggan practically begs listeners to help her remember what she learned from the last few years of her life. The experiences themselves are not unique – you can pick up through the lyrics in Choices that she probably has been through a divorce, has overgone extensive lifestyle changes, has plumbed depths of her own emotions and psyche that were previously unexplored, and has kicked substance abuse.
To add to its appeal, Spraggan effectively avoids pragmatism and judgement of your values and life choices. Spraggan leaves room for you to come to your own conclusions (example: the song title “If I had a God” in lieu of “If there was a God”) and to approach her experiences without necessarily coming away with the same things she did.
Spraggan has a clever and effective way with words I haven’t heard from a singer-songwriter in some time, paired with rhythm and melody that is catchy, but doesn’t shove their own catchiness down your throat. The melodies keep a listener interested, but are generally free of clichés, which is refreshing. In other words – there are hooks, but they don’t hurt.
Sonically, this is a singer-songwriter record, primarily focused on organic, analog instruments and Spraggan’s organic, analog voice. Even still, you will find moments of imminent attitude (see “Animal”) and even danceability (see “You’ve Let Yourself Down”).
This is certainly an album for singer-songwriter and contemplative pop fans. If that isn’t something you typically enjoy, Choices probably won’t convert you. But if you have been missing a more aggressive element of honesty and reality from the last few years of singer-songwriter albums, Lucy Spraggan has something to say to you.
Our Score 7.5/10
-Reach James, the author of this review, at jamesunderfire@gmail.com