Spectreview: Julia Shapiro – Perfect Version

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“Deep down I know
I’d rather be alone
I can’t fit into that shape”

It’s multifaceted, the title of Julia Shapiro’s debut solo album. Being a “perfect version” of yourself, depending on how you look at it, either means holding yourself to your culture’s impossible standards (and suffering internally along the way), or just letting go and being who you feel you are all along, even if it means resigning to a life alone. It’s depressing in all directions, but that’s nothing new for Shapiro’s recent music. Perfect Version, not coincidentally, is also the ideal form of the kind of music she’s been nailing down with Chastity Belt: a deeply immersive, downcast slab of crystalline indie-rock recorded and produced almost entirely solo. Bass and drums settle like phantoms in the background, carrying just a percentage of the volume lent to her dispassionate voice and that signature guitar tone, attack-less and lapping against your ears like vagrant waves from the ocean. Being in complete control of your music usually means being able to say more through your compositions than in the collective creative process, and Shapiro gives us some really cool songwriting tricks here: the nebulous area between straight 3/4 and swing beat that embodies the central message of “Shape;” the reproachful lethargy baked into the drumless, shapeshifting “Tired.” Mostly though, the album’s meant to be felt, and so many of Perfect Version’s tracks exist in the perverted coziness of depression, where nowhere’s even remotely comfortable but in dead-ended isolation. Even its relatively upbeat moments, like the laconic Smashing Pumpkins-like “A Couple Highs” and the brief moments of lucidity comprising “I Lied,” carry an entrancing bittersweetness that’s real to life. It’s not an ambitious record, but in its sweet, deep blue melodies and focus on tonal consistency it does perfectly what it sets out to do.

Recommended when the fresh pain of heartache has finally dulled.