SLOPPY JANE - Madison

You have to let your stifled voice out, but that doesn't necessarily mean letting it scatter into nothing; learning from its stories is important to find the strength to go on. So do like Haley Dahl: find a cave, a deep, sheltered place, a natural blanket, and there vent whatever torments you, there where you can listen to the echoes rumble, where you can sing along with them amid memories and regrets.

It's the Lost World Caverns in West Virginia, the caves where the young singer-songwriter dragged 21 other musicians back in the now "far-off" year of 2019 to record her second LP as Sloppy Jane, following the eccentric and imaginative art-punk-rock debut "Willow" (2018).

Dahl crafts one of the most surprising, ambitious and exhilarating works you'll hear by the end of this year; a chamber (or rather cavern) pop record that takes on operatic shades here and there, between classical-leaning flourishes and airy melodies, never short on streaks of melancholy pop.

The third track is one to frame and hang on the wall - for this writer, it's decidedly the compositional and emotional peak of the record. "Jesus And Your Living Room Floor" is the intimate, private dialogue with Haley's demons, who choose to accompany her light, aching voice with their hisses in a track with a slowcore gait and an emo soul, best listened to alongside the sound of pouring rain outside your cave. Because, as we all know, when you're left alone with your thoughts, outside it's always raining.

After the vocal flourishes of "Bianca Castafiore", it's the dreamy, dispirited nursery rhyme "Lullaby Formica" that carries on Dahl's self-reproach. “One little horse is still sittin’ in my hand/ Told if I hold him, I could be a better man/ But I know he deserves so much better than me/ So I, I set the last one free”.

The author's theatrical despair also pervades the title track and "Wilt", where the imaginative figures grow ever more absurd the more incisive they become, moving through arrangements that are always different yet coherent, imaginative and touching. “You’ve got roses on the brain/ but I’m all wilt/ Even if the roses are fake, the plastic is real/ And you are not the only one afraid of standing still”.

The heart-wrenching, apocalyptic "The Constable" is a work within the work, theatre within theatre, a track that unfolds over nine minutes that keep you glued to your headphones, as Haley wishes us "happy new year" while trying to smother her pain in a rise-and-fall that touches the grandeur of Arcade Fire and the whispers of Phoebe Bridgers.