Rachel Angel doesn’t pull any punches on the title track of her new album. Digging in with country rock grooves, Angel leverages country musical tropes — hard distortion counterbalanced with a wistful slide guitar and wailing organ — to evoke nostalgia and her outsider status. These are the themes that resonate throughout Midnite Heart Attack: a sense of wistful rootlessness in the anonymity of traveling. Angel uncovers the central tension of a genre supposedly rooted in roots: where does freedom end and isolation begin?
It’s not that heavy, lyrically speaking. Angel has a knack for pop hooks and catchy melodies. “I Can’t Win” and “Closer to Myself,” which Angel explicated in her interview a few weeks ago, are just as much 1950s rock’n’roll crooner as they are fuzzy indie rock. Overall, Angel joyously blends rock’n’roll subgenres, but she does so with expertise and intention: every mashup carefully utilizes the shades of meaning and mood we’ve come to associate with each. Even the twinkly detached “I Need Love” adds a bitter sparkle to early-aughts indie rock. It’s a pastiche of americana (not the music genre) that ultimately questions some of our culture’s most valued truths.
Rachel Angel beautifully entwines hard-learned life lessons into universal truths. These are country songs designed to invoke a sense of earthiness, but each one is carefully crafted into fine art.