“Turn the Light on, You’ve Been Exposed”: At Home with Amy O’s My Hand the Thief (2014)

[ Self-Released, 2014 ]

This brief liner note accompanying the Bandcamp release of Amy O’s My Hand the Thief is purely descriptive, but it somehow speaks volumes about the work: “All songs were composed, performed and recorded at home by Amy Oelsner.” Maybe it’s because the domestic looms so large on this distinctly person-sized collection, twinned with the Oelsner’s singular and compelling point of view. Whether it’s the casual cataloguing of “dirty underwear, dirty socks” or the handmade analogue charm of tape hiss buzzing throughout, My Hand the Thief is an exceedingly warm EP that emulates the creature comforts of a familiar living room. Crucially, though, there’s only so much comfort to go around here.

The best moments of Thief’s pithy twenty-minute runtime marry inflections of boredom, fixation and anxiety, like when Oelsner stubbornly insists “I grow old, I grow old / I grow old, I grow old,” on the Mirah-channeling centerpiece “Adventure Boy.” It’s a sweet-sounding song that unspools into a wordless chorus of yelps and grunts, gleefully disrupting its own center of gravity. In thrilling turns like this one, Oelsner’s voice strategically obliterates the recording and these deceptively small compositions outgrow themselves before the listener. (Another comes on “Biting My Leg,” when the final sung syllable cuts through the music like a blade, too-loud and unsettling, before dipping beneath an unadorned keyboard and the hushed spoken recital of what sounds like a diary entry.)

Oelsner’s guitar is equally important to the texture and shape of these songs. Her playing is polite but expressive, not unlike fellow weirdo guitar-charmers like Phil Elverum and Julie Doiron, and it’s every bit as rich and human as Oelsner’s dynamic voice. Sometimes it obediently serves the melody, like on album opener “Telephone,” and at other moments—the breezy, pine-scented “Calamine” comes to mind—it jitters around it like a restless, hand-drawn mosquito. It’s yet another feature of My Hand the Thief that recalls the impossible symbiosis of a miniaturized ecosystem, or the disordered coziness of a lived-in home.

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Amy O will be performing with Kleinerwasserbär, Callan Astar, and Mallory on 21 February @ The Good Girls Club in Bloomington, Indiana. For more information, visit the Facebook event page.