10 Flowers was a delightfully minimalistic album that allowed Kalbells aka Kalmia Traver to focus her energy in order to exude it in sticky, syrupy fountain of life-affirming vivre. If her debut studio album was a unicorn tapping at a pocket piano with hits horn, the Mothertime EP is a horse of an entirely different color. The richer arrangements point to a blossoming of Traver’s talents and a willingness to take up more space with the available range of sonic possibilities. You can still find the warm plushy synths, the playful beats, and lofty conversational vocal delivery of the debut, but now there is a certainty of purpose and a weight to her delivery of these elements, especially on the track “Precipice” which feels like a refreshing cold bath after dragging oneself out of a house fire, accented by calming effects of flowy saxophoney synths and a wading waist-high beat. This new approach is helped greatly by her collaboration with Chrome Sparks’ Jeremy Malvin, who produced the album at his Brooklyn studio, and is responsible for much of the acoustic percussion as well. It’s a compact little gift Traver has offered us here, highlighted by the replenishing affirmational breath of the buzzy “Cool and Bendable” and, the deeply gripping and reflectively grateful uplift of the title track “Mothertime.” I think Traver has engineered an excellent evolution of her sound and songcraft on this EP and I think there is a lot of potential in it to explore and build off of for her next full length.
Get it from NNP Tapes, here.
