Album Review: Going Through It

Eliza McLamb. August 2023. Courtesy of Missy McLamb.

The spirit of the modern woman is captured, bottled up, and released into Eliza McLamb’s debut album Going Through It. Diving in after it, the soft chirping of birds and gentle guitar strumming beckon the listener into this encapsulation of girlhood and adulthood, pride and shame, and friendship and love in the opening notes of McLamb’s first track, Before.

23-year-old singer-songwriter Eliza McLamb transports listeners through her journey of self-reflection, allowing us to age and grow with her.

Going Through It is a kind of musical memoir, detailing McLamb’s emotional journey through adolescence. Listening is like peering into McLamb’s personal diary, riddled with vulnerable hyper-specific accounts. The lyrics are hard-hitting, ripe with soul and consideration and anecdotes from her life - from mourning a challenging relationship with her mother to holding her best friend close. McLamb parses through her experiences and comes upon realizations that serve as truisms for modern girls and women alike as they navigate similar emotions.

Musically, the tracks seem to resemble what could possibly result from a Fiona Apple - Sufjan Stevens collaboration, but the lyrics and artistry evoke the spirit of home-videos (but maybe if those videos were produced by Sofia Coppola). McLamb’s hazy homegrown visuals bring the thematic elements of the album into greater focus. Women listening can see themselves in the tracks, looking back and grieving the girlhood that seems to have slipped from unassuming fingers.

Glitter (Official Video). September 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0uSEFQ7AkQ

16 (Official Visualizer). December 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkbxP24AAMI

For McLamb, coming of age occurs via a transition to an adolescence marked by the abandonment of her younger self’s characteristically sensitive nature in exchange for an emotionally distant cool girl™ persona. She longs to dispel the emotions that characterized her younger self in exchange for what she believes to be a more desirable, modernized, stoic version of herself, “begg[ing] for nihilism to come down on [her] every day.”

Going Through It details McLamb abandoning the warm, love-filled, sensitive child who didn’t feel right stealing the ball in a soccer game and shifting into a “brain-addled” teen. McLamb explains how she contorted herself into the type of woman that she believed she needed to become to be accepted and sought after, asking the men around her to “make [her] in [their] perfect image of a girl”. She straddles the invisible line between the innocence of childlike vulnerability and the self-aware anxieties of early adulthood.

McLamb morphs into this self-idealized image of herself in Punch Drunk and Mythologize Me, admitting she is  “too proud” and “not as careless” as she says she is, simultaneously begging, for the “boy in the backseat” to both “mythologize” her, but also for him to satiate her masochistic desire to feel small and meek.

Going Through It speaks to generations of girls – those young ones who are awe-filled and optimistic, the teens whose insecurities have overtaken them, the young women who have attempted to re-embrace their childlike wonder, and everyone in between.

This emotional transcendence in Going Through It shows a progression from McLamb’s earlier work.The iconic feature of McLamb’s 2022 EP Salt Circle was, in an attempt to convince herself she was okay, McLamb’s gut-wrenching shrieking:

“I’m doing fine. 

I’m doing fine. 

I’m doing fine.”

In Salt Circle, McLamb’s teenage (psychotropic-induced) numbness had faded, but she had not fully accepted the emotions that began to consume her.

Doing Fine (Official Video). September 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=66PsZQ-LeZ0

McLamb ultimately reaches an acceptance of these emotions in Going Through It when she admits to herself, in repeated now-characteristic cries:

 “I don’t wanna be numb anymore.”

There is a palpable shift to a version of herself that is willing to be vulnerable and warm and loved and appreciative of both the world around her and of the characteristics she had despised in it and herself for far too long.

McLamb’s preoccupation with the end of childhood throughout the album is punctuated by references to the causes of her adolescent grief. Perhaps the emotional apex of the album, 16, stories in eviscerating detail the weight of parental absence and illness. Building in intensity, distorted vocals envelop the listener in a submerged haze, akin to being underwater. Yet, in the final verse, glittering instrumentation paired with cathartic, muted harmonies builds to a shimmering release.

Exploring the recurring manifestations of childhood grief in adulthood, McLamb grapples with the contradictions and confusion that come with self-healing. Throughout (Clairo-like) mellow tracks Just Like Mine and Strike, McLamb tenderly confesses her struggles with the lasting mark of neglect.

“Love comes to me softly and I'm spiteful at the taste.”

These softer interludes complicate the sarcastic anger of McLamb’s pop-rock hits with an earnest desire to be understood, seen, and accepted – not only for who she has become but also for who she has been.

McLamb acknowledges how she has been most lauded, but wonders how the world would react to her authentic newly re-found self.

“They love me when I am miserable

'Cause I'm super marketable.

Sad girl sings a simple song

And all the others sing along.”

She critiques the ‘indie sad-girl’ market for profiting on her misery, but as this genre characterizes most of what McLamb has released so far, she leaves us wondering: what is next for Eliza McLamb?

Going Through It completes itself in the final track, To Wake Up, with McLamb’s self-affirming mantras that remind her (and us) that both aging and growing are privileges:

“Every line on my face is a gift. 

Every roll on my side is a gift. 

Every time that I cry it’s a gift.”

These beautiful and powerful affirmations sung over a gentle strum of a guitar ring in the ears of listeners upon completion of the album.

Label: https://www.royalmountainrecords.com/ 

Website: https://www.royalmountainrecords.com/eliza-mclamb 

Listen to our show: Beat Soup, Mondays at 8pm AKT

Listen to more Eliza Mclamb: https://elizamclambmusic.bandcamp.com/

By Mallory Durkin and Anne Johnson

KSUA GM