Whitney Ballen - You're A Shooting Star, I'm A Sinking Ship (2018)

In contrast to her unique voice, Whitney Ballen's music resembles many things, and covers endless ground. It's sowed with unabashedly honest lyrics that make the Washingtonian's music equal parts visceral, vulnerable, and resilient. The twelve tracks on You're a Shooting Star, I'm a Sinking Ship are set perfectly in Ballen's Pacific Northwest, a place collectively pictured in a romantic mist that blots out its everyday banalities. Vocally, she shares space with the likes of Mirah, Laura Stevenson, and Jenny O. Falls, Ballen's moody first EP, was recorded in 2014 at an old firehouse, with love letters to Olympia, Rainier, and Snoqualmie Falls. Ballen traded the firehouse for Phil Elverum's church studio for the recording of her second EP, Being Here Is Hard. You're a Shooting Star combines influences from both of Ballen's earlier releases leaving the magnificent beauty of the Pacific Northwest, then longing for it and the intimate connections made with the people in the rearview.