Laura Stevenson
Naming an album after yourself usually indicates an artist just starting out or one opening up after a long period of holding back. In the case of *Laura Stevenson*, it’s neither. A folk-leaning indie-rock songwriter raised in the Long Island ska/punk community during the late ’90s, she’s always put a premium on honesty, however raw—one song from 2019’s *The Big Freeze* describes the compulsion to pick at your own skin, and makes it sound pretty, too (“Dermatillomania”). *Laura Stevenson* is, by comparison, shadowier and less disclosing. There are flashes of anger (“State”), and her passion runs like a current throughout, occasionally overflowing (“Wretch”) but more often than not simmering, calm but alert (“Moving Cars”). You can hear the inspiration to artists like Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker: young female songwriters marrying folk diarism with punk intensity. But she’s also carrying the torch from Lucinda Williams and Neko Case, neither of whom cared enough about tradition to keep the lines between folk, punk, country, and rock ’n’ roll drawn. And while her characters teeter perpetually on the edge of crisis, *Laura Stevenson* is ultimately a diagram of how to pull through, however modest and untriumphant. Or as her friend advises on “Sky Blue, Bad News,” “Shutter up, keep your head down, don’t let it strip you bare.”
The singer-songwriter’s sixth album remains enigmatic, processing trauma and joy through the force of its unvarnished arrangements.
On top of giving voice to tracks inspired by personal tribulations, ordeals endured by loved ones, the divisive state of the world, and uncertainty in general, singer/songwriter Laura Stevenson was pregnant with her first child when she recorded her sixth album.