Jennifer Walton: Girls Review – An Elegant and Painful Beginning | music

M“ISS America,” the centerpiece of Jennifer Walton’s elegant and haunting debut record, sits us in a hotel room near JFK Airport, watching as Walton learns that her father has been diagnosed with cancer. The Sunderland-born musician was touring the US for the first time, playing drums with indie band Kero Kero Bonito, and now sadness clouded everything. A stuttering piano and muted strings accompany gothic messages from the tour van: “Cattle ranch and ruined shack/Shopping mall, drug deal, and panic attacks.”

Walton’s sweet vocals are deadpan, with the register’s tension brought about by her streak (which includes fantasies, folk sayings, and blunt diary entries) and her sharp, surprising extremes. Few songs this year have a stronger narrative flair than Shelley’s, which sees the killing of a deer and takes place in a gasoline-soaked reckoning — like Olga Tokarczuk’s “Drive Your Plow” illuminated by flashes of distorted cello. Tense, quiet verses with reverb and guitar riffs morph into big choruses, and Walton’s voice has been digitally manipulated and transformed into something omniscient and sinister.

Listeners may be familiar with Walton as an electronic producer, DJ, and contributor to bands like Caroline. Girls’ musical twists are based on this diverse profession. The opener occasionally explodes with a bang, like a surprised band, while Born Again Backwards radically raises the BPM with a punishing, beautiful, repetitive drum fill. The dense walls of sound, expertly mixed by long-time collaborator Aya, feel brutal and soulful, and Walton’s magical, obsessive thinking culminates in Lambs’ spotlight, which briefly becomes a swirling dance. “I hope your life never ends in death,” she bargains with heart-wrenching gallows humor.