Live and Let Live set a high standard for Brooke Josephson back in 2013, but in the nine years that have gone by since that record hit store shelves, it would be criminal to say she hasn’t grown significantly as both a songwriter and a player. In her new EP Showin’ Up, Josephson has a deliberate execution that is much more refined than anything she presented in her first album, and although the lyrical wit of the former release was one of its strongest points of interest, I think what she shows off in this record is far more enticing to listeners of all tastes in pop.
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Josephson’s piano play is at times as powerful as her singing, and it’s undeniably an extension of her sentiments in more ways than one. “The Lesson” and “Don’t Say” are particularly good examples of how she can manipulate fragile vocals into mountain-moving harmonizers, and you can tell she wanted to spotlight intricacy in this effort as a performer and as the producer. Showin’ Up sees her wearing a lot of different hats in the studio, but she’s taking to the process exceptionally well in every one of these songs.
The tracklist of Showin’ Up is laid out to tell a complete story, but it does not require sequential, song-by-song breakdowns to really understand its depth. On the contrary, you could play these tracks on shuffle and still pick up on the duality of the title cut and “Love Me Like a Man,” which ironically start and finish the EP. It’s nowhere even close to the laughable progressive works that indie pop artists have been playing lately, but instead something much more removed from cosmopolitan conceptualisms that have come to define a new era of surrealism in the American underground. This is almost bucolic, but not countrified.
Showin’ Up’s lyrical substance is occasionally more observational in nature than it is particularly reflective, which is a change from the common style of poetic output we’re hearing in this era of pandemic pop as well as a departure from the perspective Josephson seemed to write from in her rookie album, but it works here just fine regardless. “Rainbow” and “Hangin’ up My Cape” are more inviting because of this reason, and the former has already served as the star single of this tracklist long before the complete record was a finished product.
I came into my review of Showin’ Up expecting some pretty big things from Brooke Josephson, and to say that she hit the mark might be too great an understatement to make. Her talent is given a terrific venue through the mix by Brendan Dekora, and judging from how much she’s developed just in the past nine years, I have to assume that we’re going to see a new wave of impeccable content coming from her camp in the near future. This is the foundation of a true album and a worthy successor to what she accomplished with her initial studio offerings.
Troy Johnstone