Eleanor Friedberger - Personal Record

To finish the recording of her second solo album, Personal Record, Eleanor Friedberger decamped to Los Angeles and says she ‘was just listening to Fleetwood Mac and Neil Young, driving around in a borrowed Prius’. She’s also been talking a lot about 70s songcraft; something you can certainly hear on this album. It’s full of warm West Coast charm and effervescent stories about love. This is classic pop with a twist.

It’s something which may have been surprising had you been told about it ten years ago when she started the highly idiosyncratic Fiery Furnaces with her brother. Yet where the Furnaces have been a band steeped in restless sonic adventuring – full of countless stylistic and tempo changes – Friedberger’s solo debut, ‘Last Summer’, saw her create deftly affecting pop songs – and ‘Personal Record’ lets these ideas blossom even further. If you could say it’s missing the stomp of a song like ‘I Won’t Fall Apart on You Tonight’ it’s a record that, more than the last one, you can lose yourself in.

It’s Joni Mitchell, It’s Wings, it’s Harry Nilsson and it’s Todd Rundgren, while first single ‘Stare at The Sun is a blast of Fleetwood Mac-esque sunlight. You can split the album into two sides – the breezy up tempo pop and the more melancholic. On first listen it’s these uptempo tracks that work best. The breezy pop of ‘When I Knew’ is a delight and slightly reminiscent of early Belle and Sebastian, Friedberger describing the tale of a friend and the music they both loved: ‘she was wearing dungarees so I sang Come On Eileen’. Elsewhere ‘My Own World’ is a lyrically dexterous nostalgia filled ode where ‘everything ancient is suddenly brand new’ while ‘She’s A Mirror’ couldn’t be simpler but it’s hug chorus is still affecting.

Yet repeated listens prove the more introspective downbeat numbers to be the ones that really house themselves in your brain. The lazy groove and harmonies of ‘I Don’t Want to Bother You’ is both melancholic and uplifting, a song about love and self-doubt as she sings ‘you’ve given me everything I’ve wanted’. On ‘Tomorrow Tomorrow’ she sings ‘I was waiting for the kiss that never came’ before it comes to life in the woozy 60s girl-group chorus and fuzzy guitar outro.

The universal themes and her way to create tales that draw you in, make for an album that’s more emotionally resonant than her debut. ‘Personal Record’ is such an astute name for an album you can’t believe it hasn’t been used more often. Of course there are two puns in its title, and many of these songs seem to focus on love. These are vignettes about longing, loss and nostalgia – there’s an underlying sense that things might not be working but it will all work out in the end – and though she denies this is personal in the strictest sense her character comes spilling out of the songs.

On ‘I Am The Past’ she channels Stevie Nicks. ‘You’ll never know me but it’s not from a lack of trying’, she sings, over muffled lazy funk beat and bass clarinet. Yet with each one of her solo albums it feels like we’re getting closer to finding out.