Review: Carry Illinois unload a heavy heart with new EP, ‘Work in Progress’ -

My anxiety leaves me pretty unsettled some days. I’ve often spent long stretches of days, weeks even, of hiding away in my covers, clutching my three adorable cats closer to my bare chest, tears staining my cheeks, and wondering what my purpose in life possibly could be. It’s an unbearable weight, and I’ve thought long and hard about ending it all. That’s not to heave that burden upon you, dear reader, but to give you context on one of the year’s best releases ⎯⎯ electric and eclectic indie-pop band Carry Illinois grant stunning insight with their new EP, Work in Progress, out on Friday, a bristled and homely and humbled lineup of tunes. It’s worn around the edges, but underneath, there beats a truly remarkable, one-of-a-kind heart.

It takes an astounding amount of courage to own your own shit, and singer-songwriter Lizzy Lehman is one of the bravest people walking this earth. Her footsteps are scorched, and she breathes fire with each syllable. “I’m a work in progress / Let’s get to it,” she determines on the broiled, gut-stabbing title song, the backbone that not only embodies her journey to self-worth but serves as a crucial admission of a time within we seem to be trapped and bound by stigmas, bigotry and political and social ruin. Lehman’s phrasing is devastating and gorgeously wrought, as if she has ripped her heart from her own chest and is offering it up to us as a mettlesome sacrifice. “Hold on to the good love and the notion that you’re a good man / I see it, and I hope you know it, too,” she sings, applying the message outward to a former band mate who also suffered from mental illness.

Work in Progress (produced by the band, along with Grant Johnson) is grim, a confrontational procedure that witnesses Lehman dissecting her past and exposing its withered roots that have lodged in her brain. “Gotta start at the start at the beginning / ‘Cuz that’s the only place to start / When did you first begin to hate your body and your heart? I was 6, or I was 7, wasn’t I too young to feel that way?” she questions with the raspy single “Runaway,” which careens along as she processes her former stagnation and soured views of herself. The EP, which spends very little time wallowing and plenty of time being brutally honest about her reality, is Lehman “realizing life is a fragile thing. You have to take everything moment by moment, celebrate the successes, and learn from and move past the failures and painful experiences to grow stronger,” she says.

“You are not a out of commission / Not a shard of glass scattered on the floor,” Lehman gently counsels on the opening line of “Scattered,” an eviscerating, guitar-carved mid-tempo that presents the record’s main themes of honesty and alertness. The musical tone, cemented within the first few frames, thanks in large part to a sturdy and reliable band of players of Darwin Smith (guitar), Andrew Pressman (bass), Benjamin Rowe Violet (keyboards) and Rudy Villarreal (drums), is one of mammoth colors, painted with frizzy, faded and crumbling brushes. But that’s the vibrancy of life, drenched in misery and self-loathing and anger. Carry Illinois are gentle in their musings, though, licensing themselves to sink into the sorrow but not be hindered by it. “It’s the most human and revealing set of songs that I’ve ever written. One of the things that I decided after John [Winsor, former guitar player] passed away is that I can’t waste time putting a mask on,” says Lehman, whose vocal is always heavy but somehow fluffed with possibilities. “I have to be completely transparent and honest. That’s the only way I’m going to be able to process what I’m going through.”

“Call out my bullshit when you hear it,” Lehman charges on “B.S. (Nobody’s Perfect),” a song tuned with extraterrestrial-styled synths and coarse, folksy drum work. It’s that cool, hyper-tightened play of the synthetic and organic that makes the extended play so damn captivating; the instruments bounce back and forth, each spin, each tear echoes and drives the stakes further into our psyche. It’s both urgent and relaxed: if Lana Del Rey and Stevie Nicks were cloned and stitched together. “Tell me a story, I want to help in the healing / So I can be closer without stealing away / Teach me about fighting, by standing up straight / So I can stop crying, and carrying freight,” she instructs, dragging her embittered, numbed, cold heart across the barren, sweltering landscape. She ultimately resolves to save herself, lugging out of the dust and dirt and into fresh water.

Work in Progress is a work of immense art, carefully resting in life’s cruelty but not being damned there forever. It does get better.

Below, grab a free download of “Pushing Sound” (click the little down arrow on the right):