Julia

Various labels passed on Julia, which is strange, because it’s so easy to like. Julia Cumming shelved it, shopped it, got told to tease it and make it a hit first, then sign. Partisan eventually let her make the thing she’d already made.

That thing is a solo debut rooted in sixties and seventies pop, and unembarrassed about it. Carole King, Burt Bacharach, the odd drift toward yacht rock. Cumming calls these her “dorkiest” influences, and the record leans in rather than winking. In Sunflower Bean her voice is one instrument among several; here it’s the main event, and the Brill Building and Laurel Canyon songcraft is in service to it.

The opener, “My Life,” is the highlight: a song entirely about what she does and who she does it for. “I don’t do this to impress you” sounds like both a shrug and a slammed door.

The appeal cuts across ages. I’m old enough to come for the songcraft; younger listeners get the DIY scenester reinventing herself, or the unfiltered confessional oversharing. Something for everyone, which is presumably the problem the labels couldn’t solve. For me that’s no problem at all; it’s a reason to listen to it again.