What we have here then is a husky-voiced wisp of an alt-country chanteuse from the United States who sings like each word drifting out from between her lips is released like a dove, and who apparently obsesses over Cat Stevens and Bob Dylan. So what we have is essentially Cat Power, right? In many ways yes, almost. Just try and file a brunette hair between them at points. And the bits that she borrows from Chan are the best bits – the quiet vulnerability of her early recordings and the coherence of the latter-day without lapsing into the impersonal Motown sheen that has standardised some of her recent work. There’s that kind of fragmented, quivering delivery that sounds like her gentle words have been captured in a dark, private place and then posted on and tethered to the equally delicate music with a loose bow.
For this being her debut album, she has quite a history already, associating with Smog and The Brain Jonestown Massacre in the past – which even earned her a few seconds screen time in the infamous ‘Dig!’ documentary. From the former she carries over frugal atmospherics and spartan beds of melody and from the latter a faithful sense of homage to the past, in her case Joni Mitchell, Karen Carpenter, Nico, Neil Young and Big Star.
But that’s not to say that her influences stop there. The sombrely rolling ‘Stillborn’ and dainty, contemplative ‘Something For You’, floating on opaque delayed guitar and barely-there organ, recall the sparing beauty of Mazzy Star. And at the more upbeat end of the scale on ‘Blowing Kisses’ and ‘Nobody Cares’, and also on waltzing torch-ballad ‘Come Back, Ballroom’, she recalls Jenny Lewis’ pure modern take on a classic style. It’s not music that necessarily throws in any surprises, but genuinely emotionally articulate music need not claw at innovation as some kind of protective shield. Sarabeth Tucek, very much herself by the end of these 12 tracks, needs no such protection.