Album Of The Week: Tasha You Are Spring!

I spent most of May at a sprawling state park, striding down dirt paths beside billowing meadows, through insect-ridden trails in the woods, and along the entire shore of the beach two miles from the parking lot: a glittering reward for the long, sweltering walk. When I listen to the gentle, sunlit songs of Tasha’s new album You Are Spring!, I’m transported back there, plucked into the scene of astonishing yet humble beauty, amongst blue skies, subtle breezes, and quiet revelation.

The opening song is something of a hymn. Fellow talented singer-songwriters Jamila Woods and L’Rain join Tasha in an enchanting a cappella: “Don’t die now/ There’s life to be found now/ Green grass grows/ Spring trees put on a big show.” The song operates as a warm invitation into the record. What follows is soft but commanding, Tasha’s fingers grazing the strings of her acoustic guitar delicately and naturally, the way switchgrass in a prairie brushes against a wanderer’s skin. The lyrics, delivered in weightless croons, are laden with cosmic feelings and images: “When dusk comes on and I find myself all alone/ I feel small but perfect and beautiful,” she concludes on “Perfect.”

Its antecedent, “Promise,” has the wonderfully lush, emotional atmosphere reminiscent of the best parts of Phoebe Bridgers’ Punisher, and it abounds with lines that capture the feeling of existing within an important moment, like, “Kissing outside of the subway reminds me I’m young,” or, “The city in summer is hungry and hot and alive.” Another noteworthy line: “I’m at my best when the air is sticky on my skin.” It only becomes more exquisite when a clarinet comes soaring through, wistful and serene.

Tasha’s lyrics often resemble a collage. On the idyllic “Summer,” champagne’s on the porch, an ocean sparkles, an old guitar is tuned the way she likes. The intimate “Lucky” has smiles at strangers, a phone call from her mom, a ferry, a good person at the wrong time. But she’s even better when she veers into storytelling territory, the way she does on the alluringly enigmatic “Actor.” “I’m an actor paid/ Just to make you happy/ But I think I could stay/ If you really want me,” she sings intriguingly.

Though the album mostly feels like a dreamworld blissfully detached from reality, Tasha lets the evils of everyday life slip through on the piano ballad “Ending.” Everyone’s writing songs about the imminent apocalypse, but her grapplings are earnest and poetic and her own. The placid ambiance is miraculously maintained; the world isn’t over yet.

About the cathartic, dynamic finale “Quick!,” Tasha said she had been “thinking about how summertime always reminds me of every summer I’ve ever had. It’s a reflection on time and holding on to precious moments — but releasing scarcity. Every moment is precious but preciousness is abundant and never-ending.” It’s true that nothing can induce nostalgia quite like seasons. There’s a special intensity about summer in particular; the scorching months have a way of collapsing time and space so that every summer that’s ever happened blends into one sprawling experience. Everything is simultaneously eternal and fleeting. You Are Spring! successfully encapsulates that feeling, which is all one could want from an album.

You Are Spring is out 6/26 via Bayonet.

Other albums of note out this week:
Chanel Beads' Your Day Will Come
Dari Bay's Surprise Wish
Downtown Boys' Public Luxury
Harmony's Lifetime
Maxo Kream's O.Y.N
Butthole Surfers' shelved '90s album After The Astronaut
proun's Maybe Luck
knitting's Souvenir
Spacemoth's Inward Eye
Keenan O'Meara's Bathe In The Everlasting Light
Brutalismus 3000's Harmony
Alien Nose Job's How A Mosquito Operates
Truck Violence's The weathervane is my body
Some Velvet Sidewalk's Critters Encore
Sari Lightman's The Way I Saw You
Snarls' In Heaven There's Rainbows
Amy Rose Mills' I Think We've Met Before
Emperor X's Unified Field
Temples' Bliss
Devonté Hynes' The Invite soundtrack
Dan Deacon's Little Brother soundtrack
Gold Panda's TON UP
BCMC's Stash
Jacob Ungerleider's Congratulations
Ibeyi's Offering
Muse's The WOW! Signal
Sincere Engineer's Probable Claws
The Pretty Reckless' Dear God
Myra Lee's Capture The Flag
Christopher Ardra's Saw It In A Dream
ALEWYA's Zero
ALIA's Where The Echoes Bloom
Taiga Ultan's Shade Zero
Devon Gilfillian's Time Will Tell
Lowrey's It's Hard To Lie To Strangers
Miracle's The Living Likeness Of My Electric Daemon
Ryan Beatty's Sweet Fortune
Naomi Sharon's No Sleep In Paradise
Repeat Offender's Weapon Fetish
Akiid's Skeffu
MICO's When the lights turn on
Bebe Stockwell's Volume 1
Jadasea's Holly Grove
Hearts2Hearts' Lemon Tang
Borderline's Borderline
Félicia Atkinson's SANS VISAGE
Ethan Regan's Young Regan
Lunatic Soul's Transition II
Lexie's Halcyon Days
Brothel In Belize's Machine Machine
Cannelle's CINNA Mixtape
lykimchi's I LOVE YOU KIMCHI nascar aloe's AUDIO SHRAPNEL
ill peach's EAVESDROPPING
The Hobknobs' Helmets Off
Aliya Ultan's Looks Far Woman
Fai Laci's Elephant In The Room
Melanie Radford's For The Sake Of Stillness
Willow Avalon's Pink Pocket Pistol
Julez And The Rollerz's Dirty Little Rock 'N' Roller
Young Lovers' The Circle's End
The Wiggles' Sparkle!: A Circus Of Lights
Bike Routes' Prarie
Black Swan Network's The Early Music Vol 1.
Amberian Dawn's Temptation's Gates
THÆTAS' The Irredeemable Age
Curls Ultra's American Blood
Madeon's Victory
Atta Boy's Silt
Jordan Burchel's With Everything Going On
Sea Moss & Miscomings' Big Tube Scene
Rodney Crowell's Then Again
Born At Midnight's Eternal BAM Nation
Minyo Crusaders' From Japan with Love Andrew Sa's American Rough
The Bouncing Souls' Born To Be
Aaron MF Olson's Songs Album II
Alden Hellmuth's Tether
Tift Merritt's Sugar
Cécile McLorin Salvant's With Every Breath | Take
Dominique And The Diamonds' Honky Tonk Queen
F/i's Invisible Men
River Shook's River Shook
Stephan Moccio's Scenes From A Velvet Room
Dylan Mattingly's The Wild Heart
Unlettered's Devil's Bowl
Nduduzo Makhathini's The Myth We Choose
Eera's Just Keep Holding On
Lau Ro's Lau Ro
There Were Wires' Vessel
Izzy Oram Brown's What I Want
Abul Mogard & Rafael Anton Irisarri's Where Light Pauses In The Silence Of The Sun
CS Cleaners' What's This?
POMELO's LORELESS
Various Artists' Plants Can Dance
Rat Boy's Crash!
DJ Plead's Please
Pixies' B-Sides 1988-1996 (Expanded)
Tina Turner's Wildest Dreams (30th Anniversary Edition)
Metallica's ReLoad (Remastered Limited Edition Deluxe Box Set)
Roberta Flack's The Montreux Years live album
SML's Spontaneous Music Live live album
Chris Corsano & Tashi Dorji's Live At Ritual Botanica
Matthew Herbert & Momoko Gill's Clay (Bonus Edition)
Boone Creek's Boone Creek (Deluxe Reissue)
Fiddlehead's Baby I'll Change EP
Debbii Dawson's Where Have All The Good Men Gone? EP
Chemical's My Little Dogma EP
Milk & Bone's A Little Lucky (Remixes) EP
Chapan's Autogratis EP
Makeshift Art Bar's Marionette EP
Charlie Cello's I WALKED ALL THE WAY HOME EP
Cholita's Broken Promises EP
alan vuong's HEAVEN SENT ME EP
Mesh Kimono's Line Cliché EP
Girlfriend, Wife's God Made Me A Star EP
Tyce Delk's Everything But Gone EP