Tica Douglas – Our Lady Star of the Sea, Help and Protect Us (2017) Lossless

Brooklyn-based Tica Douglas returns with a new album, and if 2014's "Joey" was about turning inwards, these songs are about looking outwards. "Joey" had a raw, concentrated purview: Tica's quietly turbulent coming-of-age as a gender outlier. Lady Star, on the other hand, is the personal turning a little more political -- and spiritual. Part of this can be attributed to Tica's pursuing a master's of divinity right after finishing "Joey." Although Tica was not raised with religion, "faith was totally my own, and, I think, linked to my being genderqueer and needing something to tether me." Much of "Lady Star" deals with a sense of feeling paralyzed by indecision: whether the world is full of beauty or disaster; whether hopefulness is necessary or naive; whether justice is better attained with clear ideas of "right" and "wrong," or if the desire for a neat reality impedes progress. "Tica Douglas's Joey is crafted from the winsome murmurs and gentle guitar strums of someone left alone to think in their bedroom, and the result is a tender meditation on youthful malaise."