Kinsley

New York’s Sarah Kinsley is fascinated by creating imaginary worlds and alternate realities. We all need an escape. To that end, Sarah’s first album is called “Escaper”, and to which world you choose to escape is ultimately your own decision. This is vibrant, bold, beautiful music that confronts death and loss, the decimation of old friendships, romantic love’s shortcomings compared to the love shared with close friends, and fraught relationships that flourished and then fizzled. It sounds hugely confident, a real body of work. “A huge way of how I get through life and pain and horrible experiences is through the creation of these spaces where you can become someone else as a distraction—as a means to solving grief,” Sarah says. She works through it all as if the centerpiece of an epic poem, with high drama melodies and huge sweeping choruses.

Sarah Kinsley's voice is a feat of grace and wonder, daringly diving and swooping like it's the most natural thing in the world. It's so unnerving, you might wonder if the whole shebang's for real—is the voice, all that twee cuteness and the hyper racing pop beat of "Oh No Darling!" just a camp wink at pop music? That completely memorable and thought-provoking track packs in sonic references to K-pop and ABBA, the wild and free pop experimentalism of Marina and Japanese Breakfast, and the stretch-for-the skies eccentricity of Florence + the Machine. Except Kinsley manages to extend just a little higher as she sings about the existentialism and uncertainty of life in your 20s: "Oh, no, darling, there she goes/ Runnin' with her head/ For the sake of living on the edge." Catchy "Black Horse" is empowering in that it imbues a visceral, energizing feeling of power, with Kinsley doing both dark and dramatic and baby-doll affectations in a piano-pop swirl (shades of Lady Gaga's early Lower East Side dive-bar days).