Coming home to your parents’ place can make all your teenage habits and memories surge back up. There’s something about the debut album by New York singer-songwriter Maya McGrory, aka Colle, that suits this kind of idle reminiscing. Inspired by childhood memories of living somewhere called Montalvo Road, with no other context or geographic trailheads, Montalvo unfurls like a half-remembered dream sequence. Shy guitars strum softly like they’re hiding in their bedrooms and synths ripple like chimney smoke. Haunt-rock band Chanel Beads, in which McGrory performs vocals and guitar, is already pensive and dissociative. Montalvo descends to another level of Ambien-pop abstraction, stripping away the jittery instrumentation and chantable refrains.
In an interview, Chanel Beads’ Shane Lavers described how the band is intrigued by the fragility of memory, the way intense feelings often linger longer than specific details. Colle seems to apply that same idea to Montavalo, softening the edges so all that’s left are poignant traces of scenes and sensations you can’t fully grasp. Only Colle’s voice guides us through the haze, singing about devotion and longing with the cosmic freeflow of Grouper and the airy lift of Saint Etienne’s Sarah Cracknell. The strings and synths of “Silent But for Joy” sound as blissed as her breathy confessions and wordless trills; everything sways like lilypads on a pond. An aching downtempo beat gives shape to the wistful murk of “Day You Told Me,” a sweet if literal blast to the past—lyrics that return to some important moment long ago, conveyed through woozy trip-hop that conjures up visions of the ’90s.
The most hypnotic tunes shed the percussion, leaving just a forest of flickering colors barely lit by Colle’s quivering ember of a voice. It’s halcyawn music, a curious mix of longing and ambivalence with a subtle undercurrent of anguish. “Winter Garden” soothes like a serenade in a private language, Colle’s vocals sounding as honeyed and incoherent as birdsong, until they slowly shape into a pained lament: “Can’t you see I did, I did do anything for you.” Her vocals are so feather-thin it’s easy to miss the first part of the sentence, and to hear only the rippling afterimages as a gentle promise: “Anything for you, anything for you.” These songs feel like double-exposure photos, trapping serenity and unease in the same frame.
The diffuse drift may leave you craving more to chew on—narrative signposts, screwed samples, something distinctive to bring Montalvo Road to sharper life. But often the music is pretty enough that the feelings transcend the blurry slurries of barely audible phrases. The main sensation is a potent yet fading warmth, like walking down your childhood street one last time. As Colle swirls into the drowsy goodbye of “Plea and Luck,” she repeats, “It’s so hard to hold onto you.” She could be talking about a strained relationship, but also to a sense of self—her memories, her wounds, the brief time we all have on Earth that keeps slipping by.
