Things can be simple, and things can be hard as the singer pulls at the heartstrings.
Natalie Jane Hill’s Hopeful Woman is her third album, with a five- to six-year gap between this one and Solely and Azalea. It was recorded first in her native Lockhart, Texas and then in Western North Carolina, where she now makes her home. Multi-instrumentalist partner Mat Davidson provides a variety of accompaniment to Hill’s songs, which don’t really reflect the music of either state, or any others for that matter.
The album has such a narrow purview. Its true basis is as a deconstruction of self-help and navel-gazing, which is always going to be a big swing. And sadly for Hopeful Woman, that swing is, for the most part, a miss, with lyrics as transparent as a bottle of designer water on Colors, “I’ve been thinking about the direction of my life, where it’s been and where it’s headed.“ Hill fails to establish a cohesive message, becoming only more unmoored when she reaches for unearned emotional profundity, “Breaking down all of the versions of myself that I got wrong” on Never Left Me.
This makes for an awkward aspect of Hopeful Woman to judge, as the stilted emotions in its script are all quite clearly intentional – nothing here is really unusual by accident. And judgment, of course, is highly subjective. But even if you can attune yourself to the particular wavelength of the ruminations, it still feels like far too many of these songs are only stretching a thin film of reflection over the ennui.
Most of the music is at a slow tempo, almost to the beat of a ticking clock, while the swirl of double-tracked voices serves to put the listener in the midst of an echoey atmosphere, struck with pleasant chords and winsome lyrics. Hill’s vocals recall other songstresses like Sarah MacLachlan, Elisabeth Fraser or Rachel Goswell of Slowdive. An observation from Loud Woman describes this as, “Natalie Jane Hill’s earthy presence is like a warm hug from Mother Nature itself, reminding you that the seeds you plant don’t grow overnight, no matter how much you water them, and that it’s okay to keep coming back and checking in on them.”
Actually, the seeds planted here are about as substantial as sprigs of parsley, which is not to say that there isn’t something of interest trying to sprout. She could use some nutrient-rich soil to promote growth and perhaps some key tools like a hand trowel for digging, a watering can or hose, and pruning shears.
When self-examination is put aside, lovers are drifting, no, sailing apart as the clichés keep on rolling in like waves to a beach. In the airiness of Kitchen Table, she revels at the relationship’s beginning and sombre ending: “In the morning at the kitchen table, you were quiet, and I wasn’t able to find the right words.” In the dark juxtapositions of the closing track, I Thought Love Meant, Hill sings mournfully, “And I thought love meant giving up the little glow that makes you whole, and I thought love meant being someone else you don’t know.”
At its best, this album could be heard as the soundtrack to a day spent watching clouds drift lazily across the sky. She offers an ambling set of lugubrious interactions, wanting a committed trek through the woods as an escape from internalised rabbit holes. As in Oranges, “Things can be dark, and things can be light, thought it was an effort to see in my mind.” Unhappily, that effort appears to be lackadaisical instead of revelatory. “And into the current of life I will fly, changing and loving and growing and trying.”
If anyone remembers Hopeful Woman in the years to come, it will no doubt be for the fact that it contains more utterances or similar of the phrase “I think I’d like to know how it feels” than is in Hill’s best interest. She is at a stage where hope takes root and, we can only hope, grows into something sturdier and more fragrant. “And I know through time we’ll give and we’ll let go,” she sings. “And I know this time I’ll give and I’ll let go.” Next time, Hill should dig more deeply.
