Juanita Stein - The Weightless Hour

Similarly to Laura Marling’s ‘Patterns In Repeat’ earlier this year - another record that saw its author, several acts into their career, stripping things back to their most minimal of ingredients - ‘The Weightless Hour’ feels like a record that could only have been made with age and experience. Eschewing drums throughout and leaning into the folkier side of her songwriting, it finds Juanita Stein in a reflective, measured space - looking back at the giddy, naive early days of her first band Howling Bells on ‘The Game’, and her Jewish ancestry on the evocative, country-leaning ‘Old World’. Despite the sparser palette, ‘Daily Rituals’ still manages to concoct the brooding, minor chord tension that’s sat at the core of Stein’s best work since those early days, but there are also sweet, simple moments to be found; the lullaby of ‘Carry Me’, with the sound of crickets chirping in the background, is little more than a finger-picked acoustic and Stein’s underrated, consistently rich vocals. ‘The Weightless Hour’ is a mature record that sounds completely at peace with its place in life.