When I first pressed play on Brooklyn-based Camille Schmidt’s six-song EP, Good Person, I found myself transported some 30 years into the past, when the second-to-last track from the CMJ New Music Monthly’s CD sampler for January 1994 flew from the speakers of our living-room stereo. The song in question: the 1993 version of Mary Lou Lord’s “Some Jingle Jangle Morning” that was released as a seven-inch single on the Kill Rock Stars label. For those unfamiliar with the song, it’s a lo-fi folk-rock gem accented by Lord’s wispy yet hypnotic vocals. The song was inspired by her intense yet brief friendship with Kurt Cobain, though those particulars aren’t as important as the earnest lyrics and catchy melody: “Song about a sun beam, song about a girl/Your voice still rings and echoes in my mind/So many words unspoken, so many worlds apart/Your memory is all you left behind/Somewhere it all got crazy and now it’s like a dream….”
The parallels aren’t perfect, mind you, but to my ears Good Person sports a similar feel. It features better production courtesy of Phil Weinrobe, but beyond that it’s a collection of folk-rock songs about a girl. Weinrobe challenged Schmidt and band (guitarist Sam Talmadge, bassist Eli Heath and drummer Pele Greenberg) to embrace a unique process during the four-day sessions at his Sugar Mountain recording studio. Schmidt, who had a backlog of songs written over the past few years, shared nothing with the band prior to arriving in the studio, when she’d unveil a song that spoke to her in the moment. They’d jam on it until Weinrobe felt they’d found the right groove and hit record. Then they’d start the process again.
In the press release, Schmidt says, “This EP is very much about struggle, about process—specifically the process of becoming. And looking back at all the things you’ve been through in your childhood, looking back on the different versions of yourself you’ve been in friendships and relationships, the different fake versions of self you’ve presented to the world…and then sort of asking with a real honest earnest hope, is there something else? And then betting with your life that there is.”
The 16-minute set plays out somewhat like self-analysis set to song, but it’s an analysis sure to feel like aspects of one’s own life. It opens with “Your Game,” in which she muses about the state of a one-sided relationship: “You don’t really want to date me/You would rather inflate me like a/Life raft you know will carry you home.” “Red and Blue,” which clocks in at two minutes, continues the therapy session over a piano: “All grown up and exhausted/Following pain like I’m getting off on it/All of these people, I just find fault with them/I want you to change/And you don’t want to do it.”
The delicate “Bumblebee Drinks Lavender” delves into the difficulty of moving past the relationship blues—not because of the other, but because of herself. She admits, “I’m scared to love again/I’m making the same mistakes/I thought I’d changed but I’m still the same/I need to know you care.” “Fakeout Ending,” on the other hand, is a minute-and-change dose of self-reflection and, as with the other songs, rings of universal truth. “Wake Up,” which follows, finds Schmidt seeking to own her agency and leave a temperamental jerk of a partner, while “Bird on the Telephone Wire” ends the therapy with a moving depiction of wanting to fly away from a partner who prefers video games to spending time with her.
In short, Good Person by Camille Schmidt is filled with lyrical vignettes and melodies that take up residence in one’s head. In addition to Mary Lou Lord’s long-ago song, aspects of it conjure Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville. It’s well worth many spins.
The Old Grey Cat 