McConkey isn't afraid to make some very powerful feminist tinged observations about the world and how ultimately imperfect it feels to her right now. But instead of pointing fingers looking for answers, she almost seems more interested in looking in the mirror and wondering why she doesn't have all the answers. 'I've Got A Dollar' might be the most tragic example of this, where she's walking past all the beggars in the street and wonders to herself why on earth she couldn't pluck up the courage to give them some of the money that she clearly had, contemplating the excuses that we all make when we're in that position. In her own words: 'I feel guilty cause I know / It ain't fair and it ain't right / Well we'd all like to change the world / We can't seem to find the time'. She's very aware she's just as guilty as anyone.
On the topic of guilt, the gut wrenching album standout 'The Deep End' falls into similar territory. She spend the song talking to an ex musician (who may or may not be dead) who's career flamed out when they started doing drugs and drinking heavily, but by the second verse the song turns into a plea for forgiveness, as she's all too aware that she didn't do enough at the time to help him out of the hole he got himself into. She puts it very bluntly: 'If I failed would you please forgive me?'. A powerful line, especially when you consider that whether or not she actually was forgiven by this person in the end is left to hang in eerie subtext.
It's all the more evidence that this is a songwriter who is all too aware that the world is engulfed by injustice. 'Good Times On The Horizon' is yet more proof of that, a song that highlights how easy it is to delude yourself into thinking that things will get better in the end and it's only a matter of time before things start to go your way and how achieving that American Dream is still possible, even as your whole life seems to be collapsing in on itself around you, leaving you with no one to talk to no one to talk to except God Himself. Who knows if he's even listening to you at that point, though.
But don't worry, the album's not entirely miserable. The album centrepiece 'River Run' is an upbeat song about the unpredictability of life that has a ton of galloping texture that will no doubt sound really good live, but after that you are plunged straight back into tragedy with a song like 'Tempered Hands', where McConkey describes a mother figure who had been driven to numbness by life, so much so that she struggles a lot emotionally. The closest she gets to feeling anything in the song is when she's staring out of the window thinking about her impending and hopefully soon death. Yikes.
There is an emotional maturity and intelligence that shades the songwriting across these nine tracks that I'm in awe of, and at no point on the album is there more evidence of that than on the opening title track where it would be so easy to paint the men in the story as manipulative and enabling the patriarchy, but instead she's more empathetic than I would have ever expected. She insists that men are just as shaped by social pressures as women are, or, as she puts it herself on 'I've Got A Dollar': 'ain't flesh and blood what we're all made of?'. We're all the same really.
Unfortunately, for however great the songwriting is on this album, there is a part of me that wishes I loved Scott Davis' production a little bit more. Don't get me wrong, I like a lot of what he's doing, especially with his bass lines which give all of these songs a grounded organic foundation to work off of, and his integration of more keyboard instruments into songs like 'River Run' sound fantastic, but plenty of the songs here sound distinctly middle of the road or lacking bite or a distinctive hook to make them stand out beyond the excellent songwriting. I've already mentioned 'River Run', but 'The Deep End' is probably the one other exception to that rule. This is an album that could have desperately done with more interesting and well developed hooks to give the songs more replay value, particularly if you don't care as much about the writing. If you fall into that category you might find this a ponderous listen.
But as it is, this is a remarkably accomplished debut album from a songwriter I thoroughly expect to see more of in the future. Hear this.
8 / 10
Best Songs: 'Disappearing Girl', 'The Deep End', 'I've Got A Dollar', 'River Run', 'Tempered Hands'
Worst Songs: 'Hung The Moon'
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