A LITTLE HELLO EP - Ruination Record Co.

A Little Hello is an apt title for Mol Sullivan’s new EP, since it serves primarily as an introduction. Though she has been one of the Cincinnati music scene’s best kept secrets since the early 2010s, this is her first proper studio release. The opener and title track is an appropriate how-do-you-do: a plucky piano-driven tune about taking a chance on love, with playful flutters of country guitar, some Feist-like bounce, and lithe, McCartney-esque melodicism. A major surprise, though, comes in the form of an introspective bridge that reminiscences on past romantic dysfunction: “Tornadoes, what I was used to/But I never felt the breeze.” The contrast between sections makes the song a perfect microcosm of Sullivan’s songwriting style, mixing levity and a lust for life with a hard-won knowledge of the weight of the world. 

For Sullivan, releasing A Little Hello feels a bit like purging the archives, since it is peppered with songs that remind her of times she might like to leave in the past. Many of the compositions are between four to seven years old, written on either side of a difficult transition to sobriety, one which frequently left her relationship to a music career—and even music at all—in question. In its finished version, though, A Little Hello still sounds vital, anddoesn’t play like a grabbag compilation; it tells a sonically and narratively coherent story in its own right. Unlike Sullivan’s previous release (2013’s lo-fi compendium Winter ‘13), A Little Hello’s pop-minded production sparkles in headphones or on a nice pair of speakers—bright, lush, heavily layered.

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