girlpuppy - Sweetness [Colored Vinyl] (Pnk)

When beginning work on the second girlpuppy album, Sweetness, Becca Harvey realized the record-making process itself would be almost as important as the final product. On her first album of alt-pop anthems-2022's gorgeous, folk-infused When I'm Alone-the 25-year-old Atlanta-based singer-songwriter often felt like she was working in the shadow of her collaborators, writing words to their melodies and deferring to their creative impulses. Made on the other side of a relationship where she often felt marginalized, Sweetness felt like the right project for Harvey to rethink her creative approach and work solely from her own lyrical and melodic ideas. The result of this process was a darker, more texturally expansive record than it's predecessor, full of heart-rending songs about pushing back against self-blame and doubt. From it's heavy-duty sonics to it's naturally flowing melodies to it's emotionally generous lyrics, every element of Sweetness exudes confidence, capturing Harvey relishing raw creativity and trusting her inclinations. The record takes place within that moment all artists wait for: when their "voice" becomes so clear, they realize they can just open their mouth and start speaking in it. Freed from the nagging insecurity that she couldn't be a songwriter without playing an instrument-she cites The National's Matt Berninger as an inspiration-Harvey began Sweetness by recording full-length acapella voice memos. To find a backdrop for the vocals, Harvey delved into her diverse, lifelong set of musical reference points, from the country and Top 40 pop she grew up on in small-town Georgia to the later favorites that expanded her idea of what songwriting could achieve: Elliott Smith, Lana Del Rey, Yo La Tengo, and more. With the help of Asheville-based producer/co-writer Alex Farrar and additional co-writers Tom Sinclair and Holden Fincher, Harvey pinpointed a sweet spot between shoegaze, dream-pop, and pop-rock anthems from the turn of the millennium. The arrangements are sometimes nostalgic and always viscerally satisfying in their trajectories, powered by chunky sheens of distorted guitar in the choruses, drums played as hard as pop-punk hits from her youth ("Since April," "For You Too"), and poison-sweet hooks invested with both defiance and desire. Harvey's friends from throughout the indie rock world helped fill out these arrangements: Horse Jumper of Love's Dimitri Giannopoulos, The War on Drugs' Dave Hartley, Beach Fossils's Tommy Davidson, and more.Lyrically, Harvey is witty and unsparing throughout Sweetness, taking inspiration from the break-up lyricists she reveres, from Leonard Cohen to Avril Lavigne. Her memory is acute, accounting for nooks and crannies of romantic relationships history that lesser songwriters might skip over. "I Just Do!" is told in an elegantly scrambled montage that we don't need to know the frame narrative to understand, capturing that dopamine-filled urge to drop out of existence just to stay in bed with someone a little bit longer. An urgent, '90s-pop snare pattern kicks in when Harvey recalls: "I love it when I make your friends laugh/I love how much they love you/And all the fun that you guys have." These songs sparkle with details like this, mini-scenes that help create a 360-degree view of heartbreak.