Jack River - Stranger Heart (2020)

Even softened with synth-pop or shoegaze atmosphere, Jack River’s punchy indie rock feels unusually raw. This seven-song EP from the Australian native born Holly Rankin expands her stylistic range following her 2018 debut album and the dance-driven Peking Duk collab “Sugar”. But whether she’s strumming through a hazy confessional (“Night Song”) or sighing across a part smouldering ballad, part jangly rocker (“Later Flight”), the constant is her diary-like level of intimacy and articulation. Unlike the strictly fictitious album before it, Stranger Heart draws on her own experience with relationships’ seesawing highs and lows. How better to sum up those deeply mixed emotions than with this brooding refrain from “80sHD”: “Love sucks but I want it from you.”