Nonchalance has long been considered a cool thing for a musical artist to have. But, in the past few years, there is this particular breed of carelessness that has come into vogue. I guess the idea is that editing is dumb and polish is lame and caring is embarrassing. Of course, this leads to heaps of undercooked art – songs that could be great but were never chiseled, albums that are haphazard and have no central heartbeat. Nothing is allowed to ripen on the vine. Then, the marketing, the socials, all that shit, is presented as ultra-casual, effortless, “unaffected”.
Julia Cumming’s debut solo album, Julia, feels like a direct rebuke to that trend. It and she really give a fuck. And that is why this album has made it into the Gadfly series.
