Alternative

Egghunt Records · 9 October 2026

Thirty-six minutes and twelve seconds for ten songs. It’s V.V. Lightbody’s third full-length and the first she has produced herself, and the figure describes it well: eight of the ten pieces don’t reach four minutes and six stay under three and a half. The only one that takes its time is “Patience Like a Pilot”, five forty-seven, the penultimate track.

Lightbody is from Chicago, sings and plays flute and guitar, and has been a sought-after collaborator on that scene for over a decade. Egghunt Records presents the album as a route running from seventies Brazilian samba to present-day electro-pop, with backing vocals tucked in by layers, guitars in harmony and flute. Dave Vettraino shares the additional production and the mix with her, it was recorded across six different studios (Jamdek, International Anthem, Foxhall, Exit Slip, Crofton Circle and Moonbody) and Greg Obis mastered it at Chicago Mastering Service.

The words and the music are all hers. The guest list runs from Macie Stewart and Sam Cantor to Emma Hospelhorn, Jack Henry Lickerman and Cassandra Jenkins. Ljubinko Zivkovic, writing in Echoes And Dust, singles out “Two Swans” and “Patience Like a Pilot” as the two places where the crossing between pop and jazz resolves best, and both are among the four longest pieces on the record.

A record that declares itself astride samba, electro-pop and jazz gives most of those ideas less than three and a half minutes, and “There Will Be Blood” (two thirty-three) and “Precious Moments” (two forty-one) are over before you can properly get in. And on a record presented with flute, the flute is mostly someone else’s: Emma Hospelhorn plays it on “Practice Smiling”, “Satisfied” and “Robocaller”, and Lightbody picks hers up only for “Blue Within Blue”, the closer.

The clear vinyl is an edition of seven hundred and the CD of five hundred.

Rating: 7.5/10

Text by Marçal Bonastre