Carly Rae Jepsen The Loneliest Time Review: A Delicate Balance of Exuberance and Stoicism

The album is a markedly more stoic effort from a singer who, up until now, has been relentlessly upbeat.

Carly Rae Jepsen, The Loneliest Time
Photo: Meredith Jenks

When Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” blew up in 2012, the Canadian singer-songwriter was in the latter half of her 20s, though the exuberance and unfettered romanticism of the song seemed to suggest an artist much younger. During the ensuing years, albums like Emotion have proven that Jepsen can convey earnest, untarnished emotions from an adult vantage, but her sixth studio album, The Loneliest Time, is a markedly more stoic effort from a singer who, up until now, has been relentlessly upbeat.

The album opens with “Surrender My Heart,” a tuneful show of devotion to a lover, followed by a couple more tracks that fall mostly in line with Jepsen’s reputation for professing ecstatic love. By the fourth track, “Far Away,” though, something has shifted. Jepsen sings of re-acquaintance with a former flame, asking to “give this love a second try” while voicing her intention to take it slow as synthetic chimes strike notes of disarming bittersweetness.

Just when it sounds like Jepsen is settling into the kind of patience that comes with age, the song’s chorus surges as she pines for the moment when you admit to relying on someone’s constant company, or “the sweetest words of [her] whole life.” This heel turn suggests that maybe not that much has changed for Jepsen, perspective-wise, after all. The novelty, though, lies in the fact that despite claiming that her confession is “not far away,” the song’s tone is one of embracing the possibility that maybe it won’t work out.

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Later, in The Loneliest Time’s final stretch, Jepsen returns to the folk and roots-rock of her 2008 debut, on the lovely and independent-spirited “Go Find Yourself or Whatever.” Because this is Jepsen, bidding adieu to a partner going off to explore other options is couched in (somewhat infuriatingly) promises to wait for him. But the elegiac howling-at-the-moon of the song’s acoustic guitar and banjo indicate she knows he’s not coming back.

Jepsen’s efforts to (partially) cast off her idealism affectingly culminate on the bonus track “Keep Away,” a more decisively boundary-setting echo of “Far Away.” In the slow, thoughtful song, Jepsen recognizes the need to move on from a love that isn’t good for her, even if she aches for physical contact. It’s a rather stunning number that the album builds to without ceremony or self-importance—as much a feat of sequencing as it is thematic significance.

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But The Loneliest Time isn’t a dour affair. Jepsen is still the just-left-of-center pop singer whose voice is so glassy, generous, and plucky that it sounds almost alien, because what 36-year-old still sounds this utterly enchanted by life and love? Songs like “Joshua Tree,” “Western Wind,” and “Bends” breezily employ natural-world metaphors to encapsulate the artist’s amorousness, while constellations of synths and a whole assortment of guitar pedals and effects ably communicate the superstitious romantic fervor of “Shooting Star.”

Guitars are prominent throughout The Loneliest Time, though on the album’s funk-leaning tracks, like “Bad Thing Twice,” they can feel a bit canned. And while many of the songs here (especially in the first half) are economical in length, otherwise delightful, bouncy ones like “Sideways” beg to be expanded to achieve their full melodic potential.

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That said, “Beach House” is a winning confection just long enough to run through the broken promises and cheap words of a roster of discarded toxic men. The song epitomizes Jepsen’s unique appeal: innocent enough to float the idea “I want to believe that/When you chase a girl, it’s not just huntin’ season” yet cunning enough to see through bullshit and give some men a good skewering. With The Loneliest Time, Jepsen strikes a delicate balance.

Score: 
 Label: Interscope  Release Date: October 21, 2022  Buy: Amazon

Charles Lyons-Burt

Charles Lyons-Burt covers the government contracting industry by day and culture by night. His writing has also appeared in Spectrum Culture, In Review Online, and Battleship Pretension.

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