Leading off with her international breakout hit, "Sailor Song,"
Gigi Perez
's self-produced debut album,
At the Beach, In Every Life
, continues to grapple with the aftermath of the death of her older sister in 2020. The album also finds her continuing to push arrangements and production from earthy folk-rock toward anguished, electronics- and strings-embossed indie rock. In line with
Perez
's distinctively taut, intense vocal quality, it's a set of mostly driving, upset songs, rather than quietly plaintive ones, where even a track that starts out that way, "Normalcy," gradually builds into a howling lament, and the brief instrumental "Survivor's Guilt" is unsettling and dramatic, with eddying strings, echoing electronic stomps, and staticky noise. Her
Island Records
debut, the album returned
to the charts in North American and Europe. ~ Marcy Donelson