Pregnant

The universe may not always give you what you want, but it will give you what you need. If that notion is truly so, the fourth album from Northern California singer/producer Daniel Trudeau fulfils the need for a Her Space Holiday-like album in a world where HSH refuse to make a HSH-like album. On his Mush Records debut, Trudeau's voice is bittersweet and quirky, moving liquidly amongst his folktronic soundscapes, containing equal parts acousmatic, glitch and indie pop (while HSH went off the indie pop deep end years ago, never to surface again). Yet the refusal of Trudeau to maintain a consistent genre on Life Hard : I Try doesn't indicate a lack of commitment. Rather, the album attains a unique status among a charted sea of regurgitated and reconstituted song structures and aesthetics, while his lyrics betray an uncommon honesty among the posturing, controversy seeking mainstream. This, my friends, is a work of art.