“Feels like all I ever do is try / And try again,” Kerrin Connolly sings on “Try”, the first track on her latest album, Simpleton. While the song seems like a monument to self-doubt, the album by the Boston-based singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist shows an artist overflowing with chops and dedication. While there are plenty of similarities between Simpleton and previous albums like Almost (2020) and Transitions (2024), Connolly has stepped up her game on her latest record, with smart, sophisticated arrangements and an arsenal of pop songs that are a quantum leap from those already-great earlier works.
Connolly describes Simpleton as “a concept album which explores the themes of a hero’s journey – some classic, others modern and personal like surviving OCD, the cyclical nature of creativity and grief, and meeting the odds where they’re at”. From a musical standpoint, it’s also a love letter to some of her favorite musical styles from the past several decades. The latter is evident from the very beginning. Connolly is a master at creating killer hooks, with a band that is sympathetic and engaging, and those seemingly effortless melodic twists and turns.
The band in question is actually Connolly herself – except that Ellis Piper backs her on strings; Connolly plays it all herself. However, the overall vibe isn’t that of four-track bedroom demos; the “full band” sound is positively rich and soaring. The interlocking guitars and stomping rhythm section give “Try” plenty of power-pop gravitas, as well as on similarly engaging songs like the singles “Quiet” and “Big Amygdala”, which would have sounded perfectly at home blasting out of a college radio station circa 1995.
Connolly is also exploring deeper musical worlds. “Funny” is a curious slice of waltz-tempo chamber pop, and “Avalanche” is an epic ballad rooted in confrontation: “That’s a nice everything that you have there,” she sings. “Be a shame if something happened to it.” Later, in the chorus, she doubles down: “So you just keep running up that hill / I’ll be the avalanche.” Later, the heartfelt “How Easy It Is” grazes the atmosphere of sophisticated country standards, to the point that it begs for a subtle pedal steel (though it also sounds achingly beautiful as is).
While nothing on Simpleton suggests awkward genre-hopping, it’s interesting and refreshing to chart the unique shift that occurs in the album’s last three songs, which seem lifted from big, overblown, guilty-pleasure 1980s rock. “He Doesn’t Die in the End” and “The End” are electric guitar assaults, appropriate for the aforementioned hero’s journey, paired with the emotional heft of Connolly’s vocals and sounding (in the best way) like long-lost Pat Benatar singles. The closer “Simple”, with its multitracked guitars and neon-tinted synth patches, ends the record like a power ballad that brings all the prom couples to the dance floor under a glittering disco ball.
Simpleton isn’t necessarily a surprise for Kerrin Connolly, whose previous works are all worth seeking out and are readily available across multiple streaming services, but it does show an artist growing exponentially with a knack for writing great songs and placing them in the perfect musical context. The next time your Gen X friend complains that nobody’s making catchy, melodic alt-rock anymore, you know where to send them.