The Newest Noise for Your Listening Pleasure! | By Nicholas Senior
Julia Shapiro
Seattle
Perfect Version | June 14 | Hardly Art
RIYL: Navigating crises. Pushing yourself. The friends you made along the way.
Pick up Perfect Version HERE!
How would you handle an existential crisis? That’s the central theme of Julia Shapiro’s Perfect Version, an album that’s not at all what it initially seems. There’s a free-flowing spirit to the music that contrasts with the record’s piercing, purposeful lyrics. That effervescent nature is nearly impossible to capture when questioning yourself, but it’s at the heart of what makes this album so special. Constructed while on break from her main gig with Chastity Belt, Shapiro’s solo project is enveloping in nature and enthralling in execution. The hazy spirit of the music plays with the notion that all of these versions of Shapiro are trying—and possibly failing—to figure life out. “Writing and recording this record helped me rediscover songwriting in a new way. I’d never really written a whole song—guitar, bass, drums, etc.—all on my own, so it felt really gratifying to be able to do that on this record. I guess that’s a version of myself that I am attached to,” she laughs. “At the time I was writing this album, I was definitely having an existential crisis, which is not uncommon for me, so a lot of the lyrical content has to do with me questioning myself, my life, my purpose.” It’s a striking and sonically delightful reintroduction for Shapiro, for sure.
