Elise Davis - Anxious. Happy. Chill. (2021)

Nashville’s Elise Davis wrote the bulk of her latest album, Anxious. Happy. Chill. not long after her wedding last year. And while the lyrics tend to trumpet that feeling of finding true love – especially on the single “Yellow Bed” – that doesn’t mean the record is entirely rainbows and puppies.

Thanks to her powerfully emotive voice, Davis can still conjure up feelings of loneliness, longing and heartache. It’s just that the theme of finding love eclipses all other emotions on her latest effort.

Unlike her first two records, Anxious. Happy. Chill. offers a slightly more stripped down, leaner sound musically which serves to spotlight her smart lyrics more so than in the past, though it still combines elements of Americana and pop. Whether she’s singing about unplugging and shunning social media on “The Grid,” or finding someone she didn’t know she needed on the solid, driving album opener “Ladybug,” Davis is turning in some of her best music yet. It also happens to be among some of her most personal songs, like the deeply vulnerable track “Empty Rooms.”

The mostly positive lyrics were juxtaposed by a much more somber recording atmosphere, taking place in the middle of the global pandemic. Working with producer Teddy Morgan at his Nashville studio, there two played most of the instruments themselves, joined by drummer Fred Eltringham (Sheryl Crow, the Wallflowers) for just one day.

The album closes on the breezy, fun “Another Year,” about growing older and not giving a shit about it (“I just open up another beer/counting down another year”), a perfect cap to this gratifying, if compact album. At 10 tracks, the record feels like it is over almost as soon as it starts, and there is not a single song here that doesn’t earn the right to be on the album.