J.S. Recommends: “With You Every Day” by Anna Burch

When your problems have borne yet more problems (I’ve enough already thank you) and the walls have begun to close in, might I suggest taking a pause and queuing up some graceful, spacious indie pop to soothe your fraying nerves?

Singer-songwriter Anna Burch’s debut LP Quit The Curse dropped two months ago. Her music is 1990s alternative interpreted by 1960s pop, her lyrics a slow walk through the rise and fall of a summer romance. Its release was expertly timed to join me in a succession of major crises and mild panics, and is now very likely burned into my memory forever. Now, if an album is going to take up residence — quite unannounced — in your head, you couldn’t do much better.

I am a poptimist by nature. For whichever digressions I have into dissonant noise, weird minimalism, and John Cage not playing the piano for 4 minutes 33 seconds, I always return to the anthemic choruses and hummable hooks that pop serves up by design.

The final track on Curse, “With You Every Day”, delivers everything you could want in a quality indie pop tune. Jangly Telecasters are interrupted by the occasional staccato burst, a loping Labrador of a bass line steadies the track, while a chorus chock-a-block with nonsense syllables collides with the obvious — though not cloying — heartbreak at play in verse. So put on your headphones, close your eyes, and let Anna Burch’s songwriting take up residence between your ears. What else were you going to put there?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxKb3YgWyU0(Song recommendation by J.S. Robson)