Julie Doiron exuded empathy on her duet albums with Mount Eerie, brought lamplight warmth to Eric's Trip, and comforted like a favorite blanket with her solo music. On her first proper studio outing in nearly a decade, the Canadian singer-songwriter is all about new beginnings and the weird rush of emotions—excitement, anxiety, doubt—they bring. "There was never a plan ... and here I am starting over again," she sings on the irresistible "You Gave Me the Key," her voice first slightly tremulous but gaining strength. As the guitars pile on and the vocals layer, it feels like hope. Dark and mysterious "Ran" takes both stubborn pride and regret in refusing to look backward: "You told me it was over and I believed you/ so I ran, I ran everywhere/ and I can't go back to you," she sings, as noir as a skittish alley cat slinking in the shadows. Conversely, the ambling jaunt "Good Reason"—chiming prettily like the soundtrack to a rom-com—finds Doiron crooning "I'm coming home, I didn't realize just how far I'd gone... " At times, there are echoes of her '90s contemporaries Liz Phair and Cat Power. The latter is especially evoked on "Dreamed I Was," which is beautiful in the way it finds drama in stark simplicity; it's like a gut punch when Doiron shifts from the low verses ("This morning, I dreamed I was happy") into a higher register for the bridge, pleading "My sweet dream, don't leave me be." She adopts a mod posture on the wild "Thought of You" and a genial gallop for "Et Mon Amour," her delivery of the French lyrics husky and un peu louche. Doiron began her solo career using the name Broken Girl, but dropped it because, she once said: "If somebody was introducing me, it would be like, 'Now, put your hands together for Broken Girrrrl!' I'd just get on stage and feel devastated!" She sounds far from broken, though, on the primitive acoustic track "Back to the Water": "I don't need to know the answers/ I don't need to be found and given so many chances/...There's a lesson here for me to learn." © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz