Jackie West

By Jackie West’s own account, the eponymous lyric from her debut album has been running through her head throughout most of her life: “Only the wind can pull my body/Close to the mystery.” The line has functioned as a mantra for the Brooklyn singer-songwriter at different points in her life, seeming to point her towards inspiration and clarity just out of reach. Close to the Mystery (out May 10 via Ruination) threads together many moments of searching and reaching out—pulled from a variety of relationships and settings, articulated through a range of musical points. Its masterful baroque-pop songs form abstract scenes in a larger story about a self and worldview taking shape; in each, West assesses different, transient versions of herself, making revisions and absorbing the changes into a fuller, more finite draft.

The varied musical treatments mimic her change in setting and vantage. She breaks up sophisticated harmonies recalling bossa nova and classic R&B with cycling chord progressions influenced by folk (“Tiny Flowers ii”), progressive pop, and shoegaze (“Snow Amplified”). Led by producer/mixer/multi-instrumentalist Sarah Pedenotti (Lip Talk, Kalbells), West’s team of crack musicians accommodate these intrepid shifts, making the songs’ drifts toward the abstract feel intuitive; the group includes Shahzad Ismaily, guitarist Adam Brisbin (Buck Meek, Cassandra Jenkins), Nico Osborne (Nicomo), singer-songwriter Katy Pinke, and more. Recorded live with the band in the same room, West’s alluring, jazz-inflected vocals sit commandingly at the center of the mix, bringing a diverse collection of classic singers to mind at turns—Sibylle Baier, Vashti Bunyan, Hope Sandoval, Peggy Lee.

West’s songs follow her protagonist across city blocks, into and out of different rented rooms, and down farflung highways that form backdrops for liminal moments in her life. Their linearly unfolding forms mimic the process of working through knotty psychological dilemmas in real time. But even when she describes feeling lost—whether in someone else or in the world—West never sounds less than certain of her capacity to navigate the situation, singing in a voice that seems to be able to phrase any thought indelibly. Ultimately, Close to the Mystery’s shadowy and varied stories all point back to the same hypothesis: that personal peace and fortitude can only come from within. It is hard to not want to return to them again and again—savoring their alluring contrasts, digging for fresh insights to guide our own journeys.