Adelyn Rose - Ordinary Fantasy (2014)

Eau Claire, Wisconsin’s Adelyn Rose has been releasing pretty excellent but small-scale-seeming indie rock for a few years now, starting with “Time Stands Still,” in 2010, embedded below too because it’s unforgettable. Today welcomes the band’s second full-length, Ordinary Fantasy, and, for me, a stronger sense that they’re a “mature band.” I’ve always been partial to their sadder, slow-building tracks, best exemplified here by “The Wire,” whose instrumental swelling and lead singer Adelyn Strei’s hints-of-country-rock tone recalls the work of someone like Kathleen Edwards, simultaneously expressing strength and loneliness. Across the board, there’s just a general pro-ness to this whole album—something in the stepped-up recording quality on tracks like “Even” and “Structural Hostility,” maybe?