Plush
There's a certain strain of songwriting -- Epic Soundtracks' albums, Alex Chilton's Sister Lovers, the Beach Boys' "Surf's Up" -- that reveals what F. Scott Fitzgerald called "the real dark night of the soul." Plush's discography before More You Becomes You comprised two lush singles released four years apart, but they were enough to build a cult around Liam Hayes's songs, which are so wrenchingly emotional that they crystallize into pure beauty. More You strips things way down -- the instrumentation is just Hayes's voice and piano (and, in one song, a flash of French horn), and the 10 songs are over in less than half an hour. The album is almost unbearably poignant at times, the sound of a man teetering on the edge, hoping that something can save him but not believing that's possible.
