Reviewed by Ian Phillips.
By Carlie Hanson, Warner Music 2019.
Carlie Hanson is one of the latest young pop sensations to come out of America and Junk is her debut EP.
The five tracks are all well performed but fairly standard pop.
Carlie states that the EP title was a deliberate decision to give some idea as to where the songs came from.
She says that each of the songs started out as a quick “stupid’ melody that she came up with while in the shower or while she was high and just quickly threw it down in her voice memos.
I have seen other songwriters work in this way, in fact one of them recorded one of his song vocal ideas in my toilet because of its acoustics.
Drugs seem to be, or were, a preoccupation to Carlie and appear lyrically in a number of songs.
Back in My Arms, Cigarettes, and the EP closer Hazel are all about the effect that drugs have on individuals and those around them.
A couple of songs stand out. Cigarettes for its sparse guitar intro and breathy vocal and particularly Hazel. It’s a song about a friend who fell back into drugs and the song speaks to anyone who has fallen off the rails.
In the song Carlie reaches out begging Hazel to please pick up the phone because she doesn’t want her to be alone.
It’s a message we can all heed.
To be available and to reach out to friends in need even if they don’t appear to want or need our concern.-Carlie Hanson has already moved from working in a McDonalds drive-through in a Midwestern US town to becoming well established in the Los Angeles music scene and big things are expected of her.
It will be interesting to see if this EP has the impact the record company anticipates.
