Im stuck to the bed with brain zaps in my head, singer-songwriter Joanna Sternberg intones on the opening track of their debut album, Then I Try Some More. Playing by themself on piano, This Is Not Who I Want To Be narrates a brutally difficult period in the 27 year-old singers life. That song is about when I was going through heroin withdrawal and I shouldve been in a hospital, but I did it in my room and I literally just wrote that song as it was happening to me, theyve said of the song.
Then I Try Some More is a gorgeous bedroom lo-fi rendering of mid-century blues, jazz, and pop (Sternberg is a huge Scott Joplin fan) that carves out a middle ground between Daniel Johnson and Randy Newman; the piano introduction to Nothing Makes My Heart Sing wouldve sounded at home on the latters 1972 masterwork Sail Away.
All of this is to say that Sternberg is a relentlessly studious songwriter with a sharp sense of how to use phrasing to advance the song theyre singing. On this Is Not Who I Want To Be, they do just that, deploying meter and melody to do much of the narrative work.
Rain pouring down/my head pounds from/the sound, they sing in the songs first line, with a loping piano melody set to tip-tap vocal phrasing that mirrors the relentlessness of both the pounding rain on their roof and the unendurable pain of a dope withdrawal.
This Is Not Who I Want To Be is a stunning exercise in artful subtlety, the type of song that sounds like its always existed: It just kept playing in my head, Sternberg said of the experience of writing the song in real-time, but I didnt realize it hadnt been written already.