Full Speed Ahead

You’d know her voice if you heard Macklemore’s song, “Same Love.”  Mary Lambert has gone from publishing a book of poetry to being featured on one of the biggest singles in the past year.  Now she’s releasing her first album and showing us who she really is.

The Seattle-based singer started in the slam poetry realm.  Her own inner conflicts with religion (she’s a Christian) and sexuality (also a lesbian) influence her writing as the Macklemore hook showed with lines like “I’m not crying on Sunday” and “she keeps me warm.”  Lambert turns her inner turmoils and experiences into an audio experience that bares her soul.  Heart On My Sleeve is aptly titled— the album rips the band-aid off from the beginning and shows exactly who she is.

“Secrets” is a quirky song that could be mistaken for a Regina Spektor song.  Repetitive chords in the piano and guitar put her little vocal line as she sings about her past.  The opening line of the song immediately states “I’ve got bipolar disorder / my shit’s not in order.”  The upbeatness of the music (and Lambert’s overall happiness and acceptance of herself) mask any uncertainty with herself.  Her follow-up single is another soul-baring piano ballad titled “When You Sleep.”  Instead of a lighter voice, Lambert growls in the last choruses and almost breaks into tears while singing “I could make you happy / I could make you love me / I could disappear completely.”  While the two songs are opposite ends of the spectrum that show that Lambert can sing and write with the best of them, the best songs are on the rest of the album.

On paper, a song with Lambert and rappers Angel Haze and K.Flay looks almost out of the ordinary, but when you consider the success of “Same Love,” the hopes are high.  “Ribcage” is a standout track with the appearance of verses by the female rappers.  K.Flay’s verse is subdued and Angel Haze delivers a more deliberate one.

The album sticks to Lambert’s strengths— slam poetry is where she got her start, and it is not forgotten.  The sharp delivery of her vocal lines and lyrics to the inclusion of spoken work on tracks set some of her songwriting apart.  “Dear One” is a short one minute performance while the final track of the album, “Sum of Our Parts,” features the same forceful delivery of poetry between its choruses  As bubbly as Lambert is in real life, the music itself has an underlying beat that seems darker than her personality, but it works so well.

Mary Lambert may have an album that bares her soul and calls out many of her flaws, but the album itself is almost flawless.  Each track has the same openness in its writing and performance that only brings you in as a listener.  The sincerity in her voice is heard over and over.  The piano is a prominent sound in every track (including a slowed-down cover of Rick Springfield’s “Jessie’s Girl”) as well as strummed guitar chords and strings.  She is not your normal singer, nor is she meant to be a produced pop star.  Instead, she’s the girl going “full speed” with Heart On My Sleeve.