Lauren Auder expands her palette, but still retains what makes her sound her own.
For her past EPs, Lauren Auder dabbles in baroque pop with grand, bombastic sounds like on the solid ‘Who Carry’s You’ EP and the great ‘two caves in’ EP that dips into that baroque touch with solid songwriting to boot. In this recent EP of hers, she still has those baroque compositions on the core but is now blended in with alternative rock and trip-hop elements that keep things fresh and also show Lauren’s skill to try new things.
And it does definitely show in this EP, The haunting swells of ‘Small Ghosts’ paired with that tapping beat and deep guitar chord, ‘Animal’ with simple haunting chords and hook before it encapsulates into a moving ending, ‘Heathen’ with a driving guitar line that gets crunchier on the hook, and that spacious atmosphere of ‘Unseen’ with a great duet from Lauren and Celeste and the horn that plays in the background that ends this EP extremely well, and while the melody and percussion on ‘Quiet’ didn’t grab me that much, the piano is still really good.
The lyricism is still on point too, written after Lauren’s coming out as a Transwoman. Writing about how the world reacts to her trans identity, which in turn leads her to deal in difficult situations that relate to her trans identity. It’s really well written and a bit abstract, but it’s really poetic.
This is an EP that expands upon her baroque touches and infusing it with alt-rock and trip-hop but still retains her unique core with poetic lyricism to boot. From what I’ve read, it seems that she’s already working on her debut LP, and based on the EPs so far, I’m looking forward to that.
Favorite Tracks: Unseen, Small Ghosts, Animal, Heathen
Least Favorite Track: Quiet