The music of Kissing Fractures can be filed in that wonderful sub-genre of DIY sad-girl-and-guitar bedroom pop. If you like artists such as Frankie Cosmos, Adult Mom and Florist, then you’ll love this. The album sees Lin write candidly about her fears and anxieties in simple but poetic verse. See for example on ‘past tense’, where she sings:

“a woman once told me that if i mixed my tears with honey
i would feel nothing
but i’m not numb yet
and the winter solstice is oddly warm
and not knowing is slowly killing me
i just want to go back to sleep,”

The strength of the record lies in the fact that despite the overwhelmingly negative subject matter, it never feels overly heavy or intense. Each song is short and sweet and yeah Lin is sad but she’s soldiering on. Perhaps my favourite track is ‘faulty palmistry’, in which Lin likens her current woes to those she experienced as a small child:

“i’m sitting all alone in my bedroom
burying my head in my knees and all i do is cry
i am five years old and i just saw
a boy skin his knees and all i do is cry
i’m sitting on one of those things in the playground
that spin around, holding on tight”

Two of the tracks were not written by Lin at all. The title track and ‘PS you still do this to me’ were originally poems by Cutting Flashlight, a project by Boston-based Lucy Martirosyan. This makes for some really interesting songwriting, with lines such as:

“PS you still do this to me
it looks like scribbles
but it sounds like a bee
stop feeding me your honey
you need it to live”

Lin says that Lost Self is a collection of songs that “reveal how i dealt with everything that plagued me in the past year, and how i managed to find temporary solace.” It’s pretty obvious that, for Lin, writing these songs served a purpose higher than simply raising a few dollars on Bandcamp. As she goes on to say “[the album is] very personal to me, and the process of putting together his full length has been incredibly cathartic and comforting.”

If there’s one thing I look for in music it’s sincerity. This is ultimately the reason I spend inordinate periods of my spare time consuming sounds made by people in their bedrooms, or in a musty old garage with their friends. So what if the recording isn’t crystal clear? If they’re not a virtuoso on the guitar? If their vocals can’t hit a certain range or break under the slightest strain? If an artist is honest and really means what they’re saying then I’m invariably a fan. As Lin sings at the end of ‘faulty palmistry’,

“this is by no means good but at least it’s honest
and that’s what matters, right?”

And while I disagree that the album isn’t good (it is), Miss Lin got one thing spot on, and that is certainly what matters the most. Get Lost Self via the Kissing Fractures Bandcamp page.

>P.S. Kissing Fractures also has a newer EP of demos, which she released last month. I’m not so familiar with that one but early listens suggest it’s definitely worth your attention too. Get Srr on a pay-what-you-want basis via Bandcamp.

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