Coco Reilly - Coco Reilly (2020)

Coco Reilly’s debut album was years in the works, recorded three different times and a project that followed her from Nashville to Los Angeles and then to Iceland, where she has decamped to work on film scores during the pandemic.

The album, “Coco Reilly,” officially arrived today, a collection of hazy, noirish balladry rooted in Wall of Sound-era pop and vintage Americana. At the core of her meticulously fuzzed-out songs is a conceptual clarity: Truth, and the search for it. Yes, a hot topic in 2020. The album’s bookends are the singles “The Truth Will Always Find a Way” and “Be True.” The simple declaration in the latter echoes the theme for the whole record: “Be true, be true / No matter who surrounds you.”

The New York-bred singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and film composer produced the album with guitarist-keyboardist Jerry Bernhardt, eventually finishing it with Grammy award-winning engineer Jeremy Ferguson (Cage The Elephant). “Coco Reilly” also features Erin Rae (on “Mirror”), drummer Dom Billett, guitarist Ian Ferguson and keyboardist Will Brown.

Fans of Weyes Blood, Jesse Jo Stark and Jenny O. might find some “Oh Oh My My” in this album.