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Album Of The Week

Album Of The Week: Eskimeaux O.K.

3:01 PM EDT on May 12, 2015

Eskimeaux - OK

Eskimeaux – OK

DIY music isn't supposed to sound like this. You can tell that Gabrielle Smith's one-woman band Eskimeaux belongs somewhere in the DIY matrix because there's an instinctive intimacy to it. The lyrics read like the sort of poetry an incredibly smart and insightful high-school kid might write and then keep to herself forever even though it's really good and the school literary magazine would've been happy to publish it. The songs rarely stick to verse-chorus-verse formula, unfolding on their own time and according to their own logic. It's the sort of album that, 20 years ago, would've been recorded on a four-track, or maybe direct-to-boombox, and tape hiss would've rendered maybe a third of the lyrics indecipherable. But for all its bedroom-rock signifiers, O.K. sounds like something put together by a professional producer, in a professional studio, with real label money behind it.