Music For Listening To Music To

Music For Listening To Music To is a record that sounds simultaneously old-fashioned and modern, a delightful reminder of ‘that’s how it used to be done’ but ultimately a modern country album charged with electric guitars, a love of jangle and a showcase of Goodman’s glorious singing. But most importantly, it’s a gorgeous collection of timeless songs.

The highlights are plenty. [Jan/Feb 2016, p.56]

Music for Listening to Music to isn’t just a background pleasantry; instead, it may very well be the one that could move Goodman into the foreground of her career.

Music for Listening to Music To is also subject to some of La Sera’s usual pitfalls, and ultimately is a bit lacking in variety. Yet as the band digs deeper into the foundation of their sound, this album points to them finding more gold in the future. In every sense, this is a smart, confident step forward for La Sera.

This may not be their defining album, but you get the sense that in moving away from their punkier roots, La Sera’s best work may be just around the corner.

Without Goodman's unique artistic voice anchoring and guiding the proceedings, Music for Listening to Music To feels set adrift, done in not by its makers' stylistic diversions, but by their unwillingness to give the album a proper focal point.

La Sera's experiment with a new musical direction, line-up, and producer is by no means a failure, but, being the product of a logistical opportunity, comes across as more like a short stop on the way to something more solid and definitive.

The result, unsurprisingly, is a record that’s both maudlin and wistful.

For an overwhelming portion of this Ryan Adams-produced record, La Sera just sound a bit too polite, and lacking in the smirking mischief of previous releases.

These songs may take a few spins to connect and early fans of La Sera may need to open up to accept the revised style. But most will appreciate Wisenbaker’s higher profile input and Goodman’s ability to remain distinctive in the La Sera guise while maintaining the music’s chameleonic qualities and urging it forward in her still dreamy fashion.

Music for Listening to Music to borrows a little of Morrissey’s lyrical melodrama and a lot of Johnny Marr’s mellifluous guitars, which provide some of the album’s most arresting moments.

On indie pop cut One True Love and the rollicking I Need An Angel, Wisenbaker’s gritty voice scuffs up Goodman’s buoyant one – a good thing, since she can sound static at times. That said, she’s sorely missed on the jangling track Nineties, in which Wisenbaker takes sole vocal duties but lacks the charisma to pull it off.

Music for Listening to Music to is surprising in that it hits the thresholds of likeability and then runs away from the conceptual bar in favor of speeding faster than light. It might dabble in simplicity to a fault, but it makes up for it with instinctual choices like rusty strings and perfect harmonics.

While the record is undoubtedly pretty, it also feels defanged.