Mirror, Reflect

• Track Listing

On 'Mirror, Reflect', Amy O returns to form as she documents her

transition into motherhood in the early days of the pandemic. Initially

conceived as a lo-fi endeavor to record songs made with friends in those

days of uncertainty, Mirror, Reflect is an intimate and exploratory work

that weaves collected home and field recordings with shimmering

synths and Oelsner's playful lyricism.

A stalwart presence in the indie-pop underground since 2012, Oelsner

shifted her approach to record making on 'Mirror, Reflect' to emphasize

process over product, with the resulting songs born out of a myriad of

home sessions, song-a-day projects, songwriting workshops and online

collaborations. This kind of patchwork, home-spun approach was

familiar to Oelsner, who made her name with her sparkling, homemade

pop songs before releasing three studio albums, including her most

recent album, 2019's Shell.

'Mirror, Reflect' gently shrugs o the sheen of those studio albums, as an

early prenatal recording of Oelsner's daughter's heartbeat opens the

record in the near-ambient instrumental prelude of "Honey"-a wonderfully nuanced dispatch from the dog days of summer that's under-bellied

by both the precarity and beauty of the early months of infancy and new

motherhood. Oelsner's knack for finding magic in the mundane is also

deeply apparent on "Dribble Dribble," where the stick-with-you nature of

the playful rhyme schemes of the children's books that became a regular

part of her literary intake are worked into a lilting reflection on resilience,

destruction and loss.

Oelsner's initiation into motherhood is inseparable from the poetic heart

of 'Mirror, Reflect', but the album is also largely informed by the shifts in

Oelsner's relationship to herself. Through playful and emotionally acute

observations, Amy O turns the potentially contractive experiences of

motherhood, isolation, family and aging into a freewheeling work where

ephemerality and humor collide over her deft lyrical phrasing, musicality

and her keen observations turned poetic revelations.