Leche

Meredith Godreau's third full-length collection of original material under her Gregory & the Hawk pseudonym finds the upstate New York-based singer/songwriter back in her bedroom, reveling in the delicate, wistful, homegrown warmth of her 2007 debut. Godreau's deliberate, pizzicato arrangements serve as the perfect foil for her plain and perfect double-tracked vocals (imagine a less effected/comical Joanna Newsom), and while her wispy, “independent soundtrack-ready” brand of twee indie folk-pop may be omnipresent in 2010, it leans hard toward the quality end of the spectrum. There’s an addictive property to standout cuts like the breezy opener “For the Best,” the gloriously poppy “Over and Over,” and the keyboard- and drum machine-driven “Olly Olly Oxen Free,” that makes Leche the perfect go-to record for both rainy days, Sunday mornings, and lazy summer afternoons. It continuously blurs the line between precious and profound, which in lesser, more musically redundant hands would spell disaster, but Godreau is a crafty enough architect to know that innovation and evolution are as important to pop music as heartbreak and a simple hook are.