History Of A Feeling
by Madi Diaz

From Mercury 09/18/2021 19:49 | #273901

(Solid acoustic folk confessional, emo, singer/songwriter stuff. "emo" as in heart on sleeve emotional, not, like, the genre. Think Julien Baker's debut album but not quite as intense and brilliant or good.)

Boy, this is some emo shit, right here. This is sort of like a slightly less intense and more reserved and mature version of the debut Julien Baker album. It's confessional, its all about emotions and losing control of them.

This album is at its best when it hits some sort of prayer state, when it feels like just a woman quietly working things out with herself, expressing what she wants and where things seemingly went wrong. It works best musically when the songs are stripped down and quiet and fraught with quiet rage or disappointment. When the compositions and instrumentation gets amped up with loud guitars and big drum sounds, I feel it loses that special quality that Madi Diaz pulls off in the quiet tracks.

Weirdly the tracks named after emotions are the best here lol. Okay, its not that perfect a break, but its funny to me that "Rage" and "Resentment" are 2 of the best tracks here and have the hushed power to make me almost well up due to how bang on the bullseye they are at expressing their respective emotional states. And "Nervous" is one of the louder songs here and the only one of which that I like a lot, has this very catchy almost Weezer-esque riff and a chorus that kicks ass. Also the title track is solid as is track 2 "Man In Me" is heartbreaking and pretty phenomenal.

Some tracks just don't hit me right and cross that thin line into overwrought melodrama, namely "Crying In Public" or "Think of Me" and "Forever".

Overall this is a very simple and easy to describe album. Its a single person (mostly) with an acoustic, singing her heart out about love and heartbreak and anger and stuff. Its a classic format. This happens to do a pretty good job getting me emotionally invested. If you like Julien Baker's early stuff and want to just have a good cry, I recommend this album.