“Should I practice smiling?” V.V. Lightbody sings on the opening track of her latest record, Period Piece. “It’s been a while / And am I happy to see ya? / Crow’s feet show you’re still the glint in my eye.” It’s almost as if she knows the listener has been waiting six years since her last album and she’s happy to be back. Lightbody, real name is Vivian McConnell, released Make a Shrine or Burn It in 2020. Period Piece is largely cut from the same cloth, with shimmering acoustic guitars, warm production, gentle, infectious rhythms, and bits of flutes, synths, and strings that give the songs a lush feel, plus lyrics that are both articulate and relatable.
Lightbody plays a variety of instruments and is ably backed by Macie Stewart, Sam Cantor, Emma Hospelhorn, Jack Henry Lickerman, among others, who provide a suitably luxuriant backdrop for compositions that are both down-to-earth and oddly intoxicating. Lightbody’s approach to lyrics, especially about relationships, is unique and refreshing. In the beautiful, understated “Best Problem”, she sings with minor resentment about a friend who seems to be desired by everyone. “At the bar, I see your exes,” she sings. “Looks like they’re hitting it off / Must be nice to know that your rejection / Has set the scene for someone else.”
While chugging, mid-tempo rhythms tend to be the order of the day on Period Piece, there are also dreamy, ethereal ballads like “Robocaller” (featuring harmonies by Cassandra Jenkins), which tells the story of someone falling in love with a spam caller, and one of the album’s strongest tracks, “Patience of a Pilot”, an otherworldly mirage of a song that uses an airline flight as a cunning metaphor. Lightbody’s arrangements remain mostly subdued but are punctuated by the occasional wild sonic burst, along with unique instrumentation. The bluesy midtempo groove of “Two Swans” features plenty of spiky, angular guitar work from Lightbody, as well as hazy, new wave synths.
Period Piece also contains peerless moments that defy categorization, despite hinting at genre hybrids. The closing track, the dreamy “Blue Within Blue”, mixes flutes (a well-represented instrument on the record), acoustic guitar strums, and a country-folk melody that could have been covered by everyone from Patsy Cline to Roy Orbison to Aldous Harding. The otherworldliness of the music and the unadorned simplicity of the lyrics give the song a timeless quality. “I’m blue within blue,” she sings, “I’m on a dune with you.”
While she invites comparisons to both predecessors and contemporaries—her official bio accurately suggests “Cate Le Bon strolling through an overgrown meadow”—V.V. Lightbody continues to expand her catalogue with another great album that is so many things, but also uniquely hers.