Joy Oladokun -- Observations From a Crowded Room

Joy Oladokun feels as if she’s fully embraced herself on Observations From a Crowded Room. It’s not that her previous work hasn’t been vulnerable, or that she hasn’t been thoughtful and frank in her interviews, but Observations embraces a refreshing honesty — one that is blunt and painful, but also liberating and emancipating.

“Letter From a Blackbird” lets us know what we’re in for right off the bat — a folk pop song that ponders suicidal ideation. Oladokun’s voice is warm and textured, and she harmonizes with herself using layers, modulation, and autotune, creating an atmosphere that is at once pulsating and organic while alienating. Oladokun produced the album herself, and it shows in the album’s singular focus and message: Oladokun guides us through feelings of isolation and frustration while learning to find her own footing.

On Observations, Oladokun interrogates her role as an artist with a spin I haven’t quite heard before. Sure, there’s the frustration of the road, the loneliness that comes when your friends with day jobs think you’re partying every night, the gladhanding and fakeness that people approach you with. But Oladokun also considers her music’s impact on others — as well as her frustration with audiences who don’t always appreciate the nuances of race, gender, and sexuality she address in her work, particularly among a folk and singer-songwriter audience.

Oladkun intersperses the songs with confessional tracks and what seem to be field recordings of her family. These messages give depth to the album — Observations isn’t just a postcard in time of how Oladokun has been feeling since her last album cycle. This is an artist’s statement, one that asks us what the price of self-expression is and if it can ever be fully paid.

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