Marlaena Moore has always worn her heart on her record sleeve, but she's never offered as much as she does on Because You Love Everything. It's an ambitious, tender-souled album that anchors itself around deeply-felt uncertainties — about Moore's place in the world, what to do, and how to do it. But the scope of the Montréal-via-Edmonton musician's work has grown more daring on her fourth studio album, matching its emotional depths with sonic resonance: on Because You Love Everything, she captures big emotions in a potent blend of bedroom pop, indie rock and soulful folk.
Opener "I Love Everything" lets a rattling string of warm-up sounds pull together into a brief, Alvvays-like bounce, while "Unfaded" feels like a direct connector to Moore's last album, 2020's Pay Attention, Be Amazed! — a guitar-led slow-burn swells to cathartic release as Moore sings "The truest love you've ever known / Has been inside you all along."
As Everything runs its 10-song course, it finds new modes of expression, assisted by intuitive co-production from Scott "Monty" Munro. "Hungry for God" climbs darkly cinematic heights with yearning guitars and thunderclap drums from Preoccupation's Michael Wallace; elsewhere, "Running on Empty" immerses itself in bittersweet, undulating waves of synth. The shimmering blips of "Teething" add metaphysical colour to lines like, "And the door hangs on its hinges / Like it's begging for forgiveness." Even when Moore chooses a more minimal approach, big moments still land, like when "Empties" sees her offering, "my throat's been choking on a piece of my mind" over simple, bar-room guitar strums and wavering background noise.
A sense of acceptance arrives in the album's last few songs: On "Pacer" Moore sings "I will never be good enough / That's such a great relief" as a steady bassline grows into a constellation of sounds. The peaceful departure of closer "Under Earth"— calling back to "Unfaded" in its final lyric — suggests solace in a shimmering comedown.
Because You Love Everything's working title was I Don't Really Know What I'm Doing Anymore. Moore started demoing songs in the early days of the pandemic, facing the existential dread of it all. But under its final title, it feels like Moore's found freedom in articulating her introspections, even if they don't come with easy answers. Or, as she puts it midway through "Running on Empty": "Don't you understand that I'm the one who needs the friend / To just keep on letting me cry?" Sometimes expression is the only way through.