EP Review: Lindsay Munroe - 'Our Heaviness'
With her new EP, Our Heaviness, Lindsay Munroe leaves plenty of open space for both interpretation and contemplation.
“In my skin there are words yet to become a story,” she sings on the first track, appropriately titled “Opening.” She includes very little words -- just a handful of lines -- but it’s the soundscape that’s being set up. Instead of immediately leaping into a story, she smartly employs some synths to create a jumping off point. Alright, she’s brought you into a relaxed headspace. Now what?
She makes it a little grungier and rhythmical on the next track, “Easier On You,” using a few echoing electric guitars and a drum beat with a regular click on the high hat cymbal. It proves at least one thing: Munroe is most definitely aware of the power that structure has on a listener -- we like something we can grab onto -- but she isn’t necessarily afraid to abandon that structure.
On “River,” she continues with her incandescent, winding style of singing.
“She knows the way to God, the river has the answer,” she sings, just before a dissonant guitar solo plays. Again, Munroe plays with the norm -- not everything needs to be exactly in key.
“I knew just who I was meant to be, with a world based on insecurities,” she sings on the last track “Mirror,” “little girl who always stands in line, wait her turn a thousand times.” It’s both a painful analysis of herself and of her environment -- one that perhaps hasn’t treated her as kindly as it should have. Lindsay Munroe may say she knows just who she was meant to be, but it appears there’s much more to come. As she says “I hold the answer, I hold the key, but I can’t hold it all inside of me.”
Words by Allison Rapp