Ella O’Connor Williams’ latest album as Squirrel Flower is a promising leap to a bigger label (Polyvinyl) that attempts to reach headier places than your typical indie rock record. It’s an experiment that does justice to Williams’ expanding vocal talent and her poetic way with sound, and it’s a bold departure from her previous material. The songwriting, though, suffers from a certain inattention.

Album opener “I-80,” named after the famed freeway connecting California to New Jersey, begins with acoustic guitar, as a clear and focused-sounding Williams sings poetically about the failure of poetry: “I tried to be lyrical/But lyrics failed me.” Gradually, more instruments—louder and more rhythmic guitars, pounding drums, heavier bass—build toward a promised epic release, like testing to see how fast you’re willing to let yourself speed along an empty highway. But it never arrives; the song just stops. Williams spends the rest of the album repeating this cycle, speak-singing over electric riffs that sound like they were meant to be acoustic. It feels like playing air guitar to Leonard Cohen.

The first single, “Red Shoulder,” is the best song, a “we inherit the earth” declaration that Williams seems to pull directly from the soil beneath her, even if it may or may not be about the end of a relationship. (“You’re one for healing/But I’m still reeling.”) The album’s producer, Gabe Wax, is known for his work with the War on Drugs, Soccer Mommy, and Adrianne Lenker, which may account for the song’s appealing “road-trip indie” feel. Its guitar-riff-as-a-chorus recalls one of Pavement’s songwriting tricks: using sounds, not words, to construct the catchiest moments of a song. It’s going to sound great live.

If no other song approaches the high of “Red Shoulder,” there are plenty of isolated moments that come close. Williams is at her best when she’s confident enough to sit back and whisper. “Slapback” brings out her voice with a stark, blues-like chord progression that makes the phrase “If you slap me, I’ll slap you right back” more potent than any wall of sound could. “Eight Hours” renders guitar notes as delicate as wind chimes. “Streetlight Blues,” starts out like Dave Matthews Band’s “Cry Freedom” (not an insult; that guitar tone is great) and builds into a Derek Trucks-like solo that feels like a ray of light. And the closing title track deftly mirrors the melody from “I-80.”

Williams’ most straightforward and ingratiating album as Squirrel Flower is her 2015 debut, Early Winter Songs From Middle America. That album’s standout track, “I Don’t Use a Trash Can,” proved that she can write a great chorus when she wants to. I Was Born Swimming suffers from its lack of them. Save for “I-80” and “Red Shoulder,” the album’s lyrics read more like poems set to music written after the fact. By side B, the disconnect becomes noticeable. The songs all have similar tempos and dynamics and lack clear centers, and the music starts to feel like an afterthought. When there is a chorus, like in “Honey, Oh Honey!” it’s the whole song, or it feels like a joke. At its most aimless, like on “Seasonal Affective Disorder,” the music just feels lost.

It’s OK for songs not to have choruses, of course, and it’s OK to write songs that feel more like poems than, well, songs. But in doing so, Williams puts some maybe-unintentional distance between herself and the listener. I Was Born Swimming is her most expansive and professional-sounding record to date, and on the whole, does more right than wrong. But it’s an MFA of an album. As a project, it’s admirable. As an album, it leaves you cold.

Buy: Rough Trade

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