Shannon Stephens – How I Got Away (EP)
Short, but sweet — yet not too sweet. The debut disc from Shannon Stephens clocks in at just over 15 minutes, its five songs sketching minimalist vignettes of love perilously dangling by a thread.
“The Way Relationships End Up” finds the singer pondering a rare moment of power over her boyfriend as he sleeps in the passenger seat while she drives. Delivered solo acoustic, it’s a haunting, attention-grabbing first track. “Catch The Morning Line” details the desire to flee from a bad situation, with the careful accents of a soft-touch band making it the most accessible track here. “Air So Thick” and “Months” fall off a bit from that auspicious beginning, but the disc finishes strong on “You Can’t Be Happy Without Me”, a gentle banjo riff tumbling alongside her delicate piano-and-guitar arrangement.
Stephens’ sensibility falls somewhere between classic singer-songwriters of the late ’60s and the lo-fi troubadours of the ’90s: She’s Judy Collins filtered through Julie Doiron, perhaps a middle ground amid Joni Mitchell and Lois. Wherever that territory may be precisely, Stephens sounds promising within its borders.