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Corrina Repp It's Only The Future
Hush Records
A somewhat reluctant artist, Portland's Corrina Repp isn't keen on being in the spotlight or involving herself in any aspect of the music industry. Luckily, Repp has found a home on Chad Crouch's Hush Records, who quietly have released some of the best albums this year. Where her 2001 release, I Take Your Days, was a good but rather plain record, It's Only The Future is a more fully realized project, thanks in no small part to Repp's collaborator, Dahlia's Keith Schreiner. Schreiner's tasteful electronic arrangements and restrained production perfectly compliment Repp's in-your-ear vocals and sublime acoustic guitar. This is not your run-of-the-mill folk with electronica flourishes. It's Only The Future is a minimalist masterpiece, and achieves in making even the most processed of sounds pump with a human heart
Track listing:
01 Lost at Sea
02 It's Only the Future
03 You Almost Made It Out, But You Turned Around
04 No One's Telling
05 Have and to Hold
06 Finally
07 Replaced
08 Here's Someone Else
09 S.S. 5, 000
10 I'll Be Seeing You
Repp has often been compared with Cat Power and Gillian Welch, but there is a stronger sense of tunefulness to Repp's melodies that sets her apart from these artists. Vocally, Repp reminds me of Jenny Toomey (Tsunami, Liquorice) a bit. Azure Ray would be a better reference point to describing the overall sound of It's Only The Future, yet Repp's songs are more unassuming and her lyrics more emotionally stark and direct. There's a strong sense of leaving in her songwriting. Whether it be a relationship or a town, the need for escape seems poised on the horizon, though it's not usually seized. It's very much like real life. People fuck up, get into situations that they're not really sure how they ended up in, and have to make painful decisions that affect not only themselves, but everyone around them. Or sometimes they just do nothing. Either way, songs like "Have + To Hold," "Finally" and the title track deal with subjects that everyone's been through.
Listening to It's Only The Future, it's as if the songs are so wide open that there's enough room for the listener to inhabit them. When Repp sings, "I miss my friends / The ones I grew up with / The boys, the men, the girlfriends / Are you ok? / Are you even awake?" (from "You Almost Made It Out But You Turned Around"), my own past seemed to present itself for inspection. This is the beauty of "It's Only The Future." You can listen to it and get into Repp's text, yet there are so many relatable points that you end up channeling your own life through her melodies. Repp doesn't try and make any huge points with her lyrics. They're beautifully understated, and she's quietly suggesting that we all need to stop and look around a little more.
"It's Only The Future" is an album of reflections, some painful, others slowly accepted with the passage of time, but never forgotten. It's wonderful when an artist makes an album that makes you realize things about your own life. That makes you think long after its last note has faded, and brings you back to listen again and again. Hush Records is starting to look like the label to watch in the very near future, and with albums like It's Only The Future and Blanket Music's Cultural Norms, they have made some of the most important musical statements of recent memory. Here's hoping that there's lots more to come.
