Cariad Harmon
An English-born singer-songwriter living in Brooklyn, Cariad Harmon plays warm, stately folk that can evoke a late-Sixties coffee shop. But the life she sings about on her second record is no decorous idyll. "New York, you take all my money and piss it up the wall," she complains on "Wicked Town," sounding like Joni Mitchell by way of Broad City. Weaving jazz and country inflections into her subtle acoustic guitar playing and singing with a calm, clear earnestness, she's pure in her traditionalism and refreshingly unironic in her ambitions. "Shame" is a prettily spare declaration of artistic disappointment ("Sometimes I don't give a fuck") that's followed a few songs later by "I Wanna Be Famous," a back-on-my-feet anthem that speaks for every artsy transplant who ever hit Williamsburg with dreams of something bigger than waiting tables.