(Father/Daughter Records, released 24 Feb 2017)
Invisible Worlds will sound overly familiar to some fans of tenderly confessional singer-songwriters. Lætitia Tamko reels off sagacious meditations on the constant disappointments of one’s early- to mid- twenties: disappearing friends, crises of confidence, no fixed abode, getting your life together. But what sets Vagabon apart is the clear-eyed precision with which she expresses her confused state, unafraid of a clumsy rhyme-scheme or ill-fitting phrases. Invisible World is the sound of an artist self-assuredly working things out; it’s rough around the edges – perhaps even sounding incomplete at times – but to bellyache would be missing the point entirely.
Tamko cuts a miniscule figure throughout Infinite Worlds, and most of her striking lines are self-effacing and charmingly clumsy. The Embers opens like a child’s storybook: “I feel so small / my feet can barely touch the floor / on the bus where everybody is tall”. “Run and tell everybody / that Lætitia is a small fish / you’re a shark that hates everything” sings Tamko over a heavy Weezer-esque plod, indulging the David and Goliath turmoil that permeates the rest of the record. However humble this underdog might be, Tamko’s skill is in her ability to subvert expectations. Just as Fear & Force begins to either tug heartstrings or roll eyes in their sockets, an austere two-step chorus and a killer hook elevates it into something altogether more memorable and touching, as the singer reaches out to a friend beyond grasp.
Like the music that characterised 90s emo and hardcore’s emotional progeny, inner turmoil and everyday heartache in Infinite Worlds is anchored to reality by the names and places in Tamko’s life. Whether it’s Freddie who left Vermont in Fear & Force or an unnamed individual from a past life in Minneapolis, Tamko’s typically confessional lyrical style is ironically obfuscating, concealing more than it reveals with half-sketched characters and gnomic landscapes.
Uncertainty runs through Tamko’s lyrics, but her sound too is hard to pin down, as restless as the constant movement encapsulated in her words. The Vagabon of Infinite Worlds is ostensibly an artist with a three-pronged style: the Dinosaur Jr.-like scrappiness of Minneapolis and 100 Years, the alone-in-the-spotlight Cat Power moments of Cleaning House and Cold Apartment, and the synth instrumental meditation of Mal à L’aise. While the first two make up the stronger bulk of this mini-album, the third electronic route unfortunately sounds like b-side material – quite interesting as experimentation for future release. That said, Tamko’s genre agnosticism largely works because her world-weary sensibility is able to shine through, even if her sole instrumental exploration seems overlong and meandering (with French lyrics – shorthand for ‘artsy’ – to boot).
For an album so fragmentary and aphoristic, it may be surprising that Invisible Worlds’ more laconic tracks appear under different titles on Vagabon’s 2014 EP Persian Garden. Stranger still, these old songs sound louder and more expansively produced there, making Invisible Worlds in contrast appear as small-scale as Tamko portrays herself. However, Vagabon is no cheat. These reiterations don’t feel wheeled out to compensate for inactivity; the bond between Tamko and her work is one that grows circuitously, not linearly. She makes, then she remakes better. It’s a wonder where the unfixed nature of the project will take her next.