MICHELLE MANDICO "DIMENSIONS OF MY HEART"

Album offers driving pop with complex melody, heavy imagery


By Nate Leichtman

In typical Colorado fashion, Michelle Mandico plays Indie music with a folk influence, but where bands like The Lumineers or Paper Bird head downward into melancholy and heartache, Mandico instead goes up, injecting a relentless jolt of energy into a usually downtempo musical style.

The album is tantalizingly intricate from start to finish, contrasting light, driving pop with complex melody and heavy imagery and I wish more artists had the courage to sing lyrics about the end of the world over major chord progressions and 4/4 pop backbeats.

"Heart Attacked" (my favorite track) does this with a major hook that suddenly resolves to minor for a single note. Michelle's voice has a clarity reminiscent of Regina Spektor and a tendency to add bluegrass decoration to her melodies.

When combined with a crystal clear, "no bullshit" recording style, her voice gives the album a refreshing sense of purity while the lyrics and tones hint at something brooding just beneath the surface. Michelle Mandico's driving Indie-Pop album is both brazenly original and intricately built, and her new take on the genre will have even the dourest of folk purists struggling not to bob their heads.

Listen to Michelle Mandico's "Heart Attacked" from Dimensions of My Heart.


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