by David Wilikofsky
Alex Montenegro loved music from an early age. Her father was a DJ who taught her how to play vinyl, and she picked up guitar soon after watching School of Rock. She later refined her musical tastes working in record stores in Dallas, where she met people from the local DIY community; before long she was attending and playing shows, eventually touring with her project Skirts alongside bands like LVL UP and Snail Mail. Now signed to Double Double Whammy, Great Big Wild Oak is the debut album from that project, and it couldn’t land at a better time. It’s an album of melancholically beautiful songs poised to become the soundtrack for the coming dog days of summer.
Taking a look at the album’s cover gives you a good idea of its sound; the songs on Great Big Wild Oak conjure up images of wide open spaces and long, hazy summer days. Montenegro was initially inspired by lo-fi bedroom recordings from artists like Flatsound, Alex G and Frankie Cosmos, and while that aesthetic certainly comes through, the sound presented is subtly more expansive than those influences might suggest. Pedal steel twang imbues many tracks with an Americana vibe; others like “Easy” subtly weave in an entire woodwind section. Whether a track contains little more than piano and synths or half an orchestra, there’s an undeniable ease that unifies them. These are songs that are content to exist without imposing, meticulously rendered clouds of sound slowly drifting through the sky.
While on a purely sonic level the album is filled with moments of fragile beauty, Montenegro’s lyrics add a melancholic undercurrent to the songs, most of which deal with some sort of heartbreak. Sometimes that heartbreak is spelled out, as on “True”, where she sings about feeling sick to her stomach when she sees “a street with your name.” But often it is not; Montenegro’s writing is spare and conversational, and her best songs fall somewhere between intimate confession and pithy short story. A memory of summer swims is tinged with regret. Mundane images of oil slicked puddles or old t-shirts serve as conduits for deeper emotional tumult. A chance encounter at a show brings old feelings rushing back. Even if you didn’t live any of the specifics of the songs, the emotional truths they hit feel universal and cut deep.
Late in the album, Montenegro sings “I don’t feel as old as it says on my license until I’m told that I’ve grown into a great big wild oak.” Though she may not know it yet, Great Big Wild Oak is a debut album that proves she’s arrived as a musical giant.