A moving set of well-performed songs laced with resilience.
Ava McCoy is still in her twenties and “Dragonfly” is her second full-length album after “Moss On The Celling” (2022) and an EP, “Closer To The Bugs”. Born and raised in New York, but with family based mainly in the Pacific Northwest, with whom she spent her summers, McCoy has written and performed songs since a young age.
She describes “Dragonfly” as a patchwork in more than one sense. “It’s kinda all over the place, but so am I,” McCoy says. “Dragonfly feels like a patchwork quilt of me post-college.” It is also a patchwork of songs written in many different cities and at different ages, which was recorded variously in Nashville, Brooklyn, and Portland with differing collaborators.
Nonetheless, it is very much McCoy’s story, as she says: “Realising the dumb decisions I made (maybe don’t get that tattoo in your dorm room), the things I should’ve said, the ways in which I’ve changed. My tendency to self-sabotage. Friendships and relationships that have gone sour. Surviving sexual harassment and assault, and allowing myself to speak about it freely after spending almost a decade being ashamed. Since writing and recording these songs, I’m no longer afraid to say everything on my mind.”
The songs are set to a fairly lush accompaniment, with synthesiser adding to the guitar, banjo, and mandolin, as well as some sweet multi-tracked harmonies. The melodies are soft, and in the main, mid-tempo. McCoy’s lead vocals belie her youth and display the vulnerability of her difficult experiences along the way, tempered with her strength as she emerges from them. It’s hard to pin down where her music lands naturally, with at times, sometimes within the same song, elements of folk, country, jazz and pop.
The eight songs last 31 minutes in aggregate, with individual tracks ranging from just over 2 minutes to just under six.
The opening songs address her experience as a woman in the music business, both in relation to other artists but also to the industry and the gradual disintegration of a relationship.
The centrepiece of the record is the fourth song, ‘Standing Again’, with a looping melody reminiscent of early Gillian Welch or Conor Oberst. The song alludes to unpleasant episodes in McCoy’s past but is firm in its resolution that whatever she has faced, she is standing again. Assuming this is the side one closer to the contrast with the next song ‘More Than A Friend’, which almost bounces from the speakers in its embrace of the warmth and strength of friendship, sometime after leaving a bad relationship.
The title track is quite moving as McCoy recounts a previous abusive relationship in which she suffered from eating disorders triggered in part by a controlling partner. The penultimate song ‘Scared (To Admit It)’ despite its relatively chirpy delivery is a list of all the reasons why her relationship has to finish diluted by the degree to which the narrator is invested in it: “And I’m scared to admit it, but I’ve grown/ And I’m getting rid of the shit I did to make your world a home”.
The album concludes with ‘Young Girl’, which was the first single to be released from it. A folkie vibe – you can hear the squeaks as her fingers move on the strings – and a letter from the older McCoy to the little girl growing up and reassuring: “Young girl, it’s a big world, your first time at life/ You don’t have to have it down now, just keep up the appetite/ And your family is wondering, if you’re still making sounds/ Well I’ll keep on singing, this here ol’ song.”
Overall, a strong set of songs which McCoy performs very confidently. Musically, it’s very well arranged and, while it takes some time for the listener to work their way into it, the effort is well spent.
