Laura Glyda’s poetic gifts as a songwriter are abundant in her new album This Heart is a Machine. The nakedly autobiographical focus of the album’s eight songs documents the implosion and aftermath of a broken marriage with deeply felt acumen. However, it never skirts close to melodrama. The Chicago-based songwriter cycles through an extensive array of emotions trying to make sense of how something once so seemingly filled with promise can go so irretrievably wrong. She wonders what is next, how to survive, and perhaps most importantly, who is she now that this chapter of her life closes?
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Artful arranging, piano, and drums are the musical keys to the album opener “A Beautiful Light”. It is obvious from the start that This Heart is a Machine mines the well-trodden territory of confessional singer/songwriter material. It never traffics in stereotypes. Her careful build of this first song holds tremendous dramatic allure without ever sinking into bathos. Unshakable honesty and lyrical gifts separate a song like this from those familiar pitfalls.
She effectively shifts gears with the next song. “After You” dispenses with the melancholy piano-balladry of the opener in favor of briskly paced pop influences. Her musical choices are uniformly tasteful. The possibility of redemption is never far from the surface even in This Heart is a Machine’s saddest moments. The collection is, without question, a post-mortem on this affair of the heart, but it isn’t grim and unduly self-absorbed. Guitar makes memorable contributions to “After You” and takes on an even more prominent role with “Take Only What You Need”.
It finds her moving back into spartan territory as well. The bare-bones nature of the arrangement reveals many things. However, one of the chief consequences of such a move is that it zeroes our attention onto Glyda’s lyrics. She has confidence in her writing for “Take Only What You Need”. It is well justified. “Bravery” mixes folk singer/songwriter trappings built around acoustic guitar with a punchy pop design that engages the audience with a single listen. It’s a potent blend. She delivers one of her most emphatic vocals, and the rhythm section is especially memorable.
This Heart is a Machine’s penultimate tune, “The Wolf and the Lamb”, is another vocal showcase. She enhances her singing with judiciously employed post-production effects, and the introduction of jagged electric guitar further darkens the song’s demeanor. It’s the album’s longest song. It stands as a climax that reveals the considerable thought Glyda put into ordering the track listing.
The title song is the album’s falling action and concludes the collection on a decidedly upbeat note. However, she is not viewing the world through rose-colored glasses. The hard-bitten realism pervading the preceding seven songs doesn’t desert Glyda in this final moment. It is informed with the knowing sense that she will go on. It’s a substantive closing statement, both lyrically and musically, that listeners will not soon forget. Laura Glyda’s This Heart is a Machine is a rich bounty full of emotion, intelligence, and musicality.
Mindy McCall