First Impressions: Little Mystery by Little Mystery

Little Mystery’s debut is imbued with a slew of blues. Think such tinted and shaded variations as aqua, cobalt and midnight, among others, plus Maria Muldaur, Bonnie Raitt and T. Rex (not the dinosaur, but the Marc Bolan band). The music straddles the ages, in other words, borrowing from styles of long ago and fashioning them into something new. The album reminds me a bit of Paul Weller’s Fat Pop, but instead of playing like a stack of 45s it’s more akin to the FM radio of yore, when deejays cherrypicked album tracks based on feel and flow. One moment it’s mid-tempo at the oasis, the next bangs a gong, while the one after that seeks sweet forgiveness. It’s one of my favorites of the year.

Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter Ivy Meissner is the Gillian Flynn responsible for the sonic whodunit, writing all the songs. She handles vocals, obviously, as well as guitar and percussion, and is backed by Adam Brisbin on guitar, Connor Parks on drums and Ian Davis on bass, while Julian Cubillos—who handles numerous instruments himself—co-produced with her. Brass and strings also accent several songs.

The 10-track set opens with “Eye of the Storm,” which—sonically speaking—sounds like a distant mirage, just about, though lyrically it swaps out camels and harems for the serious subject of institutionalized injustice. “Shame,” about a long-ago trauma, spins like a lost T. Rex track; I featured it here, for those interested in more. “The Garden,” for its part, finds her seeing only weeds in her relationship with her mother: “Where are you now that the world is unglued?” “I’m So Tired,” which follows, is a ruminative number about feeling like a spoke in a great big wheel or like a tiny blade of grass in a great big field, with Meissner’s bluesy vocals akin to aged bourbon in a vat. (Or something like that.) The piano-based “Burning Blue” focuses on a relationship that threatens one’s sense of self, while “As It Seems” continues with that theme. Both are mesmerizing.

“Orbit” ups the fuzz quotient while contemplating significant others whose moods are satellites that sometimes collide with each other. “Easy,” on the other hand, sports a tantalizing groove, while “Down Too Fast” and the closing “The Well” dig into what sounds like depression, with the former delving into the disease itself and the latter about tapering off the pills that left her “10 years numb.”

These are songs that linger long after the album has ended. Lyrically, it delves into the societal, parental and relationship rifts that seemingly have become legion in the world, while musically it harkens back to the age when albums mattered.