Warming up to cold comforts.
Vocally similar to Adrianne Lenker and steeped in the heartfelt themes of sad girl lo-fi, Emily Hines’ debut album, “These Days” offers a quiet, musing soundtrack to the coming autumn. A self-described “sincere farm girl” in her artist’s bio, Hines unloads her anxieties and confusion throughout.
The opening track. ‘My Own Way’ is strangely comforting as Hines describes slipping into the comfort and difficulty of old habits: “rewriting texts to my friends, harboring old shame”. She struggles with determining exactly what she wants. In ‘Cold Case’, Hines wonders, “is love something you choose? Or does it burn a hole right through you?”. That very well might be the thesis statement of “These Days” – do emotions happen to us or do we consciously create that desire ourselves? And if we do end up satisfied, Hines offers another consideration on ‘All Of Our Friends’: “If it all comes out just like you intended / Won’t you be a little bored and wishing that it didn’t?”
At seven tracks long and clocking in at less than 30 minutes, “These Days” speaks for itself and doesn’t linger in the doorway. “I bet I pray just as much as you do, I’m just honest about what I hate”, Hines sings in ‘Cowgirl Suit’, “and I won’t stay to satiate those who profit off my shame”.
Perhaps the album’s highlight though is the penultimate track ‘UFO’, with Hines’ vocals muffled and distorted through guitars. In the same vein as Judee Sill’s ‘Crayon Angels’, Hines imagines the Second Coming and the arrival of a UFO in one, much like the Heaven’s Gate cult: “Jesus will come crashing in with his alien buddies… I don’t know about you but I’m holding out hope”. Clinging to hope, whether it’s in the power to change or the eternal hereafter, is a great driving force to keep going. “This whole time I thought I was running away / But it was all coming along”, she echoes on the final track.
