The songs on Omaha, New England musician Anna McClellan's new album i saw first light don't seem to want to conform. Even it seems, to her own dictates. They come across as unruly and directionless children, zig zagging across a crowded playground with singular intent while the other kids watch on.
This is slightly unnerving at first but comes to be increasingly winning as the record runs its course. Of course the unformed American adolescent a has a long and charming lineage in popular music. Jonathan Richman, The Shaggs, Violent Femmes, Jad Fair, Camper Van Beethoven. The weird kids from your neighbourhood. The ones that the cool kids shun but you secretly suspect have hidden insight into the true, secret mysteries of life.
McClellan makes no effort whatsoever to try to make her songs conform. To try to bash them into shape and make them sit up. This is what they are. Although you might wonder on occasions whether this is something of an artful conceit and she's actually terribly normal, you have to draw the conclusion that if she is, she plays the oddball misfit card most terribly well.
This strain of quirky American suburban teenage eccentricity almost deserves a book of its own. The artists above would get a chapter to themselves. As would Juno, American Splendor, Garden State, Perks of Being a Wallflower, you name 'em. i saw first light is merely the latest new entry to this rather wonderful sub-genre of coming of age quirkily.
This is nothing you haven't heard already really. But that's no reason why you shouldn't hear it anway. I'm only slightly sad that it was released towards the end of last year and not in this one as I'd love to put it in a chart at the end of the year. It's a record I think will become one I love the more I hear it, iron out its crumples and become deeply familiar with its mishappen melodies and wonky charms.
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