Salisbury, Maryland native Lauren Glick is an artist that brings a whole new perspective into the music world. She started as a graduate of Berklee with a BA in film scoring and then decided she wanted to write her own songs. Those who have a background in film scoring have a huge appreciation for the instrumentals and background sounds present in music. Additionally, with her raspy and soulful vocals, Glick has often been compared to artists like Janis Joplin. She recently dropped her newest album Lush—a classic bluesy rock album that makes you feel like you are back in the 1940’s when jazz and blues were all the rage.
Immediately starting with a classic blues guitar sound, “Don’t Add Up” is the first track on this album. Listeners get that first taste of Glick’s strong and raspy sounding vocals as she hits notes in several different octaves. This track has a very an old school blues lounge club type of vibe that has us eagerly anticipating the rest of the album.
“Don’t Let the Rain In” is a beautiful song about the hardships of life and not letting them stop you from what you want. In this case, ‘the rain’ is everything standing in your way, but Glick says it “can’t scare away my soul.” The repeated chorus of “don’t let the rain in” throughout the song puts such emphasis on the message to keep pushing forward. The instrumentals add to the calm and serene mood that this track creates.
Glick picks up the pace more with the song “Poor Boy.” Her clever lyricism and the groovy guitar riffs in this one make for one heck of a revenge song. This is the type of song you listen to when you want to feel like the main character out for vengeance. This song had similar themes to the second track on the album, “I’m Onto You” as well as the third track “Little White Lies.” All these rock n’ roll blues songs that make you want to sing along. In these tracks Glick’s talks of catching her lover in a lie and never coming back, leaving a past relationship behind, and moving on stronger than ever. She truly shows how much of a strong woman she is that will not put up with anything less than what she deserves.
The album ends with “Perfectly Capable.” The bluesy guitar and piano riffs in this one start us off in this song about a past relationship in which Glick was not happy because the other person was “perfectly capable” of doing simple things by himself but she was doing them. She claims she was “too tired and too polite” to do anything. The backing vocals in this once demonstrate that Glick can work in some gospel influence to her music and it works. This added element put more emphasis on her lyrics and added more texture to the sound overall.
Lush by Lauren Glick is an album full of surprises and life lessons. With the infectious rock n’ roll blues sound that she has created for herself, there is no doubt that her career success is just taking off. Any fans of the blues and rock will find something to love in her music and I cannot wait for more future projects of hers.
Reviewed by Carmen Zdanis
