The Blow

Last year we fell in love with Khaela Maricich the minute she stuck her The Concussive Caress disc under our noses. And now? Well, she’s pregnant. The baby is a weightless tiny disc named Poor Aim: Love Songs (after her mother) and it’s the first in the Pregnancy Series — a "baby concept record,” the brainchild of some natal-minded folks at States Rights Records and Slender Means Society. Indubitably, this baby is sweet (that’s compounded by the small release run of only 700 per Pregnancy Series contributor). The Blow is calm in the face of a storm; she’s well-versed in her relaxed disposition and won’t make any outlandish efforts to catch attention too quickly. Instead, she has that most cherished and strived-for ability to reel you in with a lull done right, an inescapable pull that gets its momentum from quality artistic impulses, never flashy fleeting expositions. In that sense, her remarkably human indie-electro songs are a perfect fit for the project’s aim. Her creative touch is like a mother’s intuition — while other people are scrambling through piles of messy beats and mismatched influences, she’s the one walking into the situation and casually picking out the right spot or certain thing you couldn’t seem to find (though it was right in front of you all along). Still, that mother was once a girl too and her fresh-faced candid charisma shines from the start on "Hey Boy.” Really, each song is a winner, with no filler at only seven short tracks in total. Oh, and closer "Come On Petunia” borrows a chorus from Sting’s "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” — amazing!