Amy O - Elastic (2017)

Amy Oelsner has been putting out music for over a decade now under the name Amy O, and the project has followed her through her Arkansas hometown and through to Ohio, Massachusetts, Brooklyn, and most recently Bloomington, IN, where she’s settled down and rounded up a full band. Last year, she released Arrow with that band and worked with fellow Indiana singer-songwriter Erin Tobey as Brenda’s Friend, and later this year she’ll put out another Amy O album called Elastic.

It’s a sharp and punchy collection of songs as evidenced by lead single “Lavender Night,” which starts off with a lot of energy and only builds from there as it picks apart a dreamlike insular haze. “The lyrics and melody came to me quickly and without fuss. I wrote it after a little scare I had at the doctor with a mysterious lump,” Oelsner explains. “It’s about the constant (and often invisible) line of fragility that we walk upon in life, learning how to follow trails of light throughout difficult circumstances, and resisting the black hole-like vacuum of negative thought patterns.”