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Feb 05, 2024 Web Exclusive By Frank Valish

Going Through It is an album you can dissolve into. Eliza McLamb’s debut is a tour de force of young adult poetry, soul-baring introspection, eye opening insight, and melody-filled pop. Beginning with nature sounds that segue into gentle acoustic guitar and warm, beatific voice on “Before,” Going Through It is a song cycle that illuminates what could be the experience of all of us.

“Just Like Mine” is gentle fingerpicked guitar and the soft voice of shared experience, McLamb concluding, “Honey, your grief looks just like mine.” “Modern Woman” is perfect pop about settling into adulthood while striving for meaning.“Crybaby” explores childhood pangs of the sensitive, with a tinge of hopeful in lines like, “Peering through the glass, I make the cracks into a shape that I can live through.”

“Mythologize Me” explores the confounding nature of a relationship reliant on one person’s being enamored of the other’s dysfunctional qualities, ending with, “I know you won’t want me when I’m better,“all wrapped up in a melody that can best be described as Taylor Swift-ian.

“16” may be the album’s piece de resistance, a stark and startlingly open reading of McLamb’s traumatic youth. Yet the song still manages to end with a bit of jaded hope: “Inexplicably, I keep waking up/I keep walking forward into the dusk/I’m absolving/I’m forgiving/I don’t care who’s deserving/I’ll come later with a hammer and break open my burden.”

And the string orchestration on the album’s final two tracks, “Strike” and “To Wake Up” brings all the emotion of the album to the fore in a most crushing way.

Back to the album’s opener, “Before” finds McLamb singing the line, “I wish there were things I never understood.” This could be the album’s thesis. But at the same time, it’s the overcoming, the living, the lessons learned, and ultimately the hope that ends up shining through. (www.wordsfromeliza.com) (www.royalmountainrecords.com)

Author rating: 8/10