Rebecca Loebe
Give Up Your Ghosts (Blue Corn Music)
Reviewed by Christina Garcia, Fri., April 12, 2019
Rebecca Loebe spray-painted a bedroom of home goods ghost white for her latest album cover. The Berklee alum and 2011 The Voice contestant even boasts a Patreon subscription account. As such, her first label-supported LP hasn't slowed her hustle. Give Up Your Ghosts finds the Atlanta-raised singer effortlessly crystallizing jazzy pop-folk on her fourth LP. "Growing Up" stands out immediately as confident, understated Americana. The last line in her chorus, "Growing up, growing old, getting over it," sounds layered, feasibly about an unnamed "you," but today's Loebe doesn't confess what her earlier albums might. Luckily, her simplest phrases and generalities smoke into significant, emotional material. A 2009 winner of the Kerrville Folk Festival's songwriter competition and one-third of new trio Nobody's Girl, Loebe effervesces less than her earlier self on Give Up Your Ghosts, but is no less optimistic. "When you're out on a limb fresh out of branches/ Take your chances."
