Lady Lamb the Beekeeper - Ripely Pine

Ripely Pine is 23 year-old Aly Spaltro's first studio album, but she'd recorded a handful of lo-fi albums starting in her teens. These recordings display a rare confidence, an approach beholden to nobody in particular and a preponderance of ideas, but are stronger conceptually than in execution. They are the sound of Spaltro finding her voice and honing her craft, and the reason Ripely Pine sounds like an audacious third studio album by an established artist.

Spaltro wrote many of the songs while still in her teens, and there are drafts of some of them among her early recordings, but she already had a knack for striking imagery, such as leprosy on the moon's surface tainting its glow. Although she played many of the instruments herself, she's taken advantage of having extra personnel and hasn't skimped on arrangements. Strings elevate some songs to a level just shy of operatic, while mariachi horns turn "Aubergine" into a song that is at once jaunty and harrowing. Songs that were made to rock, such as "Bird Balloons" do exactly that - in fact, Ripely Pine is primarily a rock album, albeit one made by someone with a folk singer's heart.