Saddle Creek Records – 29 Apr 2022
Easily listening comes with a twist this time around
Illinois native Tomberlin’s i don’t know who needs to hear this… is the follow-up to her debut 2018 album At Weddings. It is her first release since 2020’s Projections EP. This album is an ambient, spacious, and beautifully somber reflection on not only the author’s reality but her audience’s, as well. For a full understanding of what inspired this album’s thematic elements and thoughtful presentation, you need not look any further than the Tomberlin bio page. In essence, 2020’s collective spiral left most of us wondering, searching, and grasping for things to make sense.
The first track of this album, “easy”, sets a melancholy mood with its bare-bones feel. A simple and subtle percussion is set behind some really nice synths and bright pianos that, at times, give an avant-garde vibe with their offbeat hits. This song is a beautifully arranged piece that questions the backseat that we take in order to make relationships easier for the other party. As with most songs on the album, the arrangement and instrumentation are the cherries on top of Sarah Beth’s incredibly vulnerable and equally strong vocal performance and poignant lyrics which are undoubtedly the stars of this album.
“happy accident”, the ninth track of the album, makes use of a mix of clean and very distorted guitars to convey the overall message of the song, which I’ll leave for you to decipher. The lyrics that stopped me in my tracks were, “Always measure my time by the way you spend mine / I wanna burn it all down, can I borrow a light / And though you dare me to, I could leave in the night”. The guitars don’t just embody the message, but they keep the listener engaged and coming back for more with an almost hypnotic call and response with the vocals.
Much like life over the past two years, this album is filled with paradoxes and riddles that Sarah Beth has asked herself, and now, asks us. Personally, I had a great time letting myself get totally immersed in this album, which in my opinion, was pretty easy considering its depth. Although there are only a couple of songs that will find their way into my playlists, it’s because I feel the songs as part of a larger whole, and I want to honor that. If you have the time, I would recommend listening to this album in its entirety.
With all that said, this album is certainly not going to be for everyone, especially those with short attention spans or those who don’t like getting into their feelings. However, if you like creative and innovative songwriting that makes you reflect on what’s really important in life, you may just be one of those folks Tomberlin was alluding to in the title of the album. While not every song on this album was my cup of tea, I can honestly say that I am someone who needed to hear this…
Tom B. Bearded is a news editor and reviewer for TGEFM. He recently emerged from the scraggly woods near your home.
