As the featured vocalist on
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis' "Same Love,"
Mary Lambert acquired a certain degree of stardom -- certainly enough to warrant a major-label release of her own.
Welcome to the Age of My Body is that recording, a quickly released EP of four songs that showcases
Lambert's voice, poetry, and politics, although not necessarily in that order. Opening with "Body Love, Pt 1," the EP immediately stakes a claim on the politics, as
Lambert recites a litany of affirmations, urging females to feel comfortable in their bodies, comfortable in their sexuality, comfortable being who they are.
Lambert's intentions are admirable but the attack is aggressive and wearying, so when the EP gives way to two piano ballads -- the love songs "She Keeps Me Warm" and the melancholy "Sarasvati," each tangling elements of
Fiona Apple with
Dido and
Sarah McLachlan -- it's a relief (the skittering electronics of "Body Love, Pt. 2" are in this vein, if a little fussier).
Lambert makes no bones about putting herself at the center of her songs -- she name-drops herself in a line in "Sarasvati" -- and she tends to treat the personal as polemical, which winds up giving her achieved pearls of wisdom the slight veneer of a personal column; her songs are meant to educate and inspire, not illuminate. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine