Molly Sarlé

★★★★ Karaoke Angel PARTISAN. CD/DL/LP One third of Mountain Man finds redemption via ’70s California soft rock. In the eightyear gap between Mountain Man’s two albums, Sarlé attempted acting and waitressing, while backing Feist on tour and constantly doubting her own music. Happily,

Karaoke Angel is total validation, recasting Mountain Man’s Appalachian folk via Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks models of Fleetwood Mac (there is even a song named Dreams, ironically one of the more Appalachian turns), radiating breezy melancholic warmth and lonely midnight chills. Sarlé’s characters are invariably lost and searching: in Human, she encounters “the kind of guy who might say something like ‘maybe in another lifetime’”. This Close analyses her motives in a relationship with an addict, who she met at a karaoke bar, among those singers trying to connect and belong. The closing Passenger Side is her own aching Gold Dust Woman, haunted by regret and exhausted by love. Martin Aston