Sometimes a single chord is enough to make you feel held. Buck Meek’s fourth solo album The Mirror does exactly that: it wraps the listener in an almost childlike, candy-coloured lightness that never feels trivial. Clear guitars, a twangy, warm, slightly frayed voice, eleven songs that feel like the first genuinely bright day of spring after too much grey. And yet more is happening beneath that luminous surface. Meek – raised in Texas and guitarist with Big Thief – does not write simple comfort anthems. Questions interest him more than answers. The mirror of the album title is not decorative but structural: relationships, language and self-images are all viewed here at a slight angle. When, on »Heart in the Mirror«, he sings of a love readable backwards, or on »Can I Mend It« gently tests his own capacity for repair, fine cracks begin to appear in that lightness.
Produced with James Krivchenia, The Mirror blends organic band warmth with electronic delicacy. Much of it was recorded live, while synthesisers settle across the songs like a second, faintly shimmering film. Despite the large number of contributors, the sound remains strikingly homogeneous: the songs often move at a similar pace, in comparable guitar tones. Even so, the mood holds. Not every album has to blow everything apart. The Mirror may not be for listeners searching for rupture or maximum drama. But for anyone willing to surrender to its atmosphere for just under 40 minutes, it works remarkably well: floral without becoming kitsch, melancholy without tipping over.
