Thanks for Coming: You Haven’t Missed A lot

Maintaining with Rachel Brown’s catalog could be overwhelming. Along with their work as one half of the experimental indie-pop duo Water From Your Eyes, they’ve launched 79 initiatives on Bandcamp since September 2012. You Haven’t Missed A lot, Brown’s newest launch below the identify Thanks for Coming, is a welcome entry level. Akin to a best hits LP, the 14-track compilation spans all of Brown’s types from twee, acoustic-led tunes to jangly bouts of distortion, together with songs as previous as 2015’s “Yr Form of Cool” and as current as 2022’s “Plagiarizer.” Like a retrospective exhibition of their artistic course of, it presents a flawed however endearing tour of Brown’s inventive progress and the lived-in allure of their songwriting.

Since Brown began releasing introspective indie-rock as Thanks for Coming simply over a decade in the past, the lineup has undergone a number of permutations, involving bassist and co-writer Linda Sherman, drummer and Water From Your Eyes bandmate Nate Amos, and newer collaborators Charlie Dore-Younger and Mike Kolb. A few of Brown’s most affecting materials, nonetheless, is solitary. Initially included on 2022’s rachel jr., “My Title” is an train in gradual pressure, constructing on a modulated bassline and a foreboding acoustic guitar. Though Brown layers in ambling percussion and synth pads, “My Title” fades like mist rising from a lake, by no means constructing to a climax and adequately subtle to be neglected.

On one other solo recording, “U R Not Sick, Yr Electrical,” Brown longs for the previous and future concurrently. “I’d give something to return to October,” goes their opening salvo, however by the following verse they’d “give something to go proper to November.” The compilation’s most poignant track, “Me, Lacking You,” memorializes a relationship that’s failing purely because of shitty circumstances: “I do know I’m onerous to come up with/’Trigger I’ve been held for a lot too lengthy/However not lengthy sufficient for the 2 of us.” Like Brown’s finest lyrics, it’s a easy but trenchant remark about misplaced love.

Provided that You Haven’t Missed A lot paperwork Brown’s work since highschool, a number of the inclusions really feel underbaked. “Yr Form of Cool” poses a collection of repetitive questions (“Do you wanna contact my hair?” “Do you wanna make a joke?”) that yield little depth inside the narrative of an age-inappropriate relationship. “Universe,” a track about romance in a pc simulation from 2018’s again at it once more, may gain advantage from extra thematic growth. However even these weaker tracks present context for Brown’s progress as a songwriter. Contrasting the standard concision and focus of a Thanks for Coming album, You Haven’t Missed A lot performs like a mixtape from a buddy keen to listen to your ideas. What it lacks in uniformity, it compensates for in heat.