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Mar 24, 2020 Web Exclusive By Michael Watkins

On her 2017 album Natural Conclusion, Rose Cousins really pulled out all of the stops. Desperate to leave behind the lazy comparisons to Joni Mitchell (these basically boiled down to “well, they’re both girls from Canada who sing, right?”), she cultivated a brooding, plush, refined record that served as an overlooked masterpiece in a year of gargantuan statements.

Three years later and she’s back with Bravado, a record that serves solace to introverts and attempts to explain our world to those more extroverted souls around us. On this collection of songs, the real gems of which can be found in the album’s latter half, Cousins has produced tracks that double as motifs and observations that not only discuss their subjects in relatively non-flashy terms but slow down the world of the listener—a difficult thing to accomplish in our modern permanently-on-fast-forward society.

Cousins has said that this record is inspired by the disconnection she has felt in becoming a part of modern life, an existence that encourages us all to “do more” or suffer the consequences of losing stride with our peers and, for the majority of Bravado, she is successful in this, even if she never really returns to the heights of her last record. (www.rosecousins.com)

Author rating: 7/10