Mori - It Can’t Be You
“Gave you a hand, and you took my whole body
But you were so honest about it”.
The vulnerable, honest singer-songwriter craft has enjoyed a very productive period in recent years; and one of the most promising newer faces within the genre is New York based artist Mori. Her 2024 EP the hill i die on showed a lot of potential, and got the attention of contemporary Lizzy McAlpine among others. Her debut LP, It Can’t Be You, released independently on October 10th, improves further on a lot of that project’s best traits.
One of the things this record does best is the balance of music with emotion. It plays very well with dynamic changes, making the album much more resonant as the emotional peaks coincide with beautiful crescendos in the instrumentals and in Mori’s vocal delivery alike. Her vocals are mostly exceedingly gentle, with the almost fragile sound making them very touching; she always sounds earnest, with some highlight more passionate moments, such as on the bridges of “house” or “miss you, hate it”.
The album’s main focus is clearly on the writing. Mori’s lyricism is extremely specific in its imagery and word choices; this results in it being quite wordy at times, but that works in her favor - it feels poetic and incredibly cutting, like every word is there for a reason rather than just for the sake of saying more; every line contributes significantly to making the experience of the album more immersive and easier to empathize with. Every story is extremely vivid and told with great care; there are a host of words and themes, like love and heartbreak, permanence and change, and others, that reappear throughout the album, making it feel that much more cohesive and whole as a body of work.
This is also helped by the production of the album, which is light and airy, with a lot of space in the mixes amplifying the ambience and singularly tender atmosphere of the record. The instrumentation feels more intricate and complex than in Mori’s previous work, with the extra layers making the songs feel more important and larger scale. The whole record feels very mature and grounded, and the production supports that very well.
Overall, It Can’t Be You doesn’t represent anything fundamentally new sonically, but it really doesn’t need to - Mori does more than enough to make the familiar sounds her own thanks to her unique charm and personality as a performer and especially as a songwriter. The fundamentals of the singer-songwriter sound are done to perfection on this album as well, supporting the wonderful lyricism perfectly and making for an incredibly engaging project, from by an artist who is on the right path to becoming a household name in the genre.
7.9/10
