Originally released in a limited-run edition of cassettes in 1996,
I So Liked Spring
is lo-fi pioneer
Linda Smith
's album of original music inspired by and written around the poetry of English poet
Charlotte Mary Mew
, who was most active in the Victorian era. At this point in
Smith
's discography, she'd graduated from her gently obscured four-track recordings to the relatively advanced step-up of eight-track home recording, the results of which first showed up on her 1995 album
Nothing Else Matters
.
has a similar tone and atmosphere as
, with instrumentals that frame
's weightless vocals with auxiliary percussion sounds, ghostly lead lines from post-
Velvet Underground
electric guitar or student-model keyboards, and nervy double-tracked acoustic guitars. Songs like "Afternoon Tea" place the album dead center in the mid- to late-'90s, with naive melodic lines, open chords, and sweetly amateurish drum machine claps and plucked tones akin to the earliest
Magnetic Fields
experiments with electronics. The sing-song vocals of "From a Window" and the circular guitar figure that loops through the duration of the stunning title track both bring to mind different phases of
Beat Happening
's creative arc, from their excitable beginnings to the more thoughtful and pensive tones of their 1992 swan song
You Turn Me On
. Lyrics culled directly from
Mew
's poetry give
an austere air unlike any of
's other albums while complementing her musical style with perspectives of tenderness and unassuming beauty born of another time. The album is an essential piece of the
puzzle, one where she reveals more about herself in her interpretations of another artist's work. It's a lesser-known gem to play alongside more recognized albums from
Young Marble Giants
,
Virgin Insanity
Marine Girls
, and the like, with a sound environment that's inviting and strikingly insular at the same time. ~ Fred Thomas