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Jul 28, 2023 Web Exclusive By Caleb Campbell

Madeline Kenney’s music is all about subtleties. Her songs resist the easy path of effortless hooks, instead finding their greatest successes in twisting rhythms, swirling harmonics, and evocative textures. Her melodies are curious and restless, yet they often resolve to silken conclusions, layered into celestial musical passages.

On her last album, 2020’s Sucker’s Lunch, that sumptuous warmth soundtracked Kenney in the early days of a new relationship, navigating the complicated waters of new love with her then-partner. In contrast, her latest effort deals with the waning days of romance, written as prescient reflections in the months prior to the pair’s breakup. Yet, the resulting record feels less like a “breakup album” and more a dreamy inward journey. Rather than meditating in dark and downcast tones, Kenney navigates her feels bathed in sunlight and iridescent synths.

The results are more insular and often more experimental than her previous efforts. Though Kenney’s music has always had an artful streak, the songs here feel more stripped and exposed, with an unwavering spotlight placed on Kenney herself. She largely leaves behind the guitars that drove Suckers Lunch, instead building soundscapes full of spacious left-field electronics. After a brief ambient piano intro, “Plain Boring Disaster” enters floating on dizzying melodies, accompanied by striking electronic percussion and Kenney’s glassy vocals, now multi-tracked into powerful block harmonies. The track abruptly ends, leading into the hypnotic synth arpeggios and alluring groove of “Superficial Conversation.” Both offer divergent and fascinatingly off-kilter visions of indie pop, full of glittering maximalist detail and delicately traced melodies.

Historically, Kenney has often been found in the orbit of Jenn Wasner and Wye Oak, with Wasner both producing her 2018 album Perfect Shapes and co-producing Sucker’s Lunch alongside her Wye Oak bandmate Andy Stack. Certainly, there continues to be a lot of shared creative DNA on display with her latest effort, but A New Reality Mind also finds Kenney stepping into her own as a producer, handling all of the production and recording this time around. The record was written and recorded in Kenney’s basement, and it bears both the intimate shades of that creative process along with Kenney’s instincts for sweeping arrangements.

Though they were recorded in a basement in the aftermath of a harsh breakup, the songs here sound transportive and otherworldly. Kenney often plays with many of the same textures throughout the record, but she rearranges them into fascinating new shapes with each track, such as the spacefaring guitar solo on “Reality Mind” or the stabs of synths and dissonant chords on “Leaves Me Dry.” Occasionally though, she’ll surprise with some towering drums as on the climax of “HFAM” or intoxicating saxophone, as on “I Drew a Line.” Her song structures are often winding and abstract, constantly caught in the rush of Kenney’s shifting tone and dynamics. “Red Emotion” initially feels almost ambient, but it later shifts into a mesmerizing electronic rhythm colored by earworm synth hooks. Oftentimes, a towering vocal harmony or dissonant chord will rush in and disappear just as fast, hitting the listener with fractioned, minute shifts in the track’s sonic blend.

Within this ethereal locale, Kenney paints a self-portrait, exploring the shape of her life and relationships. Here her lyrics don’t often meditate on heartbreak, choosing rather to unpack the sobering reality of Kenney’s flawed self. “Plain Boring Disaster” captures the record’s confessional tone in its opening lyrics, while also gently poking fun at the idea that Kenney’s heartache is unique or revelatory: “Well I might as well sit down and try/If nothing else, to get by/With no secrets left/Or romantic alibis/Plain boring disaster.” Later, “New Reality Mind” explores how Kenney shaped herself around her partner, and “Red Emotion” finds her pushing down pain and anger to appease those around her一“I’m fine with being changed by anyone/No hard rules to my mind/You can put me under the gun.”

These meditations form the emotional center of New Reality Mind, leaving Kenney with a record that feels like a therapeutic breakthrough as much as a musical evolution. Kenney approaches herself with a welcome degree of warmth and self-acceptance, a sense of perspective and grace that gives the record an airy sun-lit undercurrent. As much as these songs are reflections in the aftermath of love lost, they are equally a path forward, offering new beginnings and new stylistic rabbit holes. In this setting, Kenney forges her plain boring disasters into gems of lush, astral art pop. (www.mkenneymusic.com)

Author rating: 7.5/10