Ash, Anna
Floodlights
Her voice holds a rare type of hesitation, careful not to reveal too much of itself too soon, while her lyrics urgently, precisely, pleadingly, throw it all on the table, bare, under a blazing white cold light. It's a record seriously indebted to Ash's childhood spent listening to Emmylou Harris and Bonnie Raitt, filtered through the lens of indie-folk contemporaries like Feist and Sharon Van Etten. Each tune's a carefully considered gift to the listener, at once spacious and tight, forgiving and fraught. It all comes to reflect Ash's life, a mirror to the sadness and joy of growing up in our strange present.