Billie Marten is a child of the gloaming, the afternoon unspooling behind her. She writes of yellows, certainly, and the blues arrive later; big, inky, blue-black blotches of melancholy that fall and then blossom on fading parchment paper. At her first performance, aged 12, she played a Joanna Newsom song, and then “Doll Parts” by Hole. She adores the amber haze of home, while yearning for the city. By the time “Live” arrives, her paean to an imagined California, an imagined Berlin, an imagined elsewhere wrapped up in home comforts, the only thing left to surprise the listener about Writings of Blues and Yellows is that she sat in one place long enough to learn the piano.
Matthew Neale 