Avalon Emerson – Written into Changes (clear red)

Change, they say, is the only constant in life. Fittingly, multi-hyphenate musician Avalon Emerson sounds at home harnessing the steady flux of her existence on Written into Changes, the memoiristic second album released under her Avalon Emerson & the Charm moniker. A work of rigorous invention and revision, the albums themes of personal and relationship evolution came into clarity after they were all done, according to Emerson.

The making of Changes was, appropriately enough, very different from that of & the Charm. While that album was, in Emersons words, soft and bedroomy, the energy was upped this time around, as Emerson carefully considered how this material would work in a live context. The resulting body of work is band-driven but groove-heavy and dance-adjacent. The break-beat-assisted Eden has a baggy sound thats reminiscent of dance-rock hybrids of the late 80s and early 90s. The witty How Dare This Beer was written in loving tribute t