The Art of Forgetting

Boston-born vocalist Alice Lee spent the first few years of the 2000s on a series of electronica-infused indie EPs that demonstrated incremental improvements in her vocals and arrangements. 2003's Art of Forgetting is a flawed but promising disc that suggests what a lazy collaboration between Fiona Apple and Portishead might have sounded like. Lee's work bears an inherent sense of danger, of impending collapse: "all you can do is fall," she repeats in resignation on album opener "The Choice." What keeps this dynamic from being fully realized, though, is her delivery, clipped and unsure of itself, residing entirely in her head voice instead of her far richer chest voice. Her arrangements are for the most part just as timid, "Question" and "Someday" existing in forgettable hesitant trip-pop territory. Things pick up with the more complex beats of "Relapse" and "Velocette," the latter being a bit of neat bubbling electro-funk that merges skittish drum loops with striking synth flourishes. Lee's tendency to back into notes instead of nailing them, most apparent on "Relapse," is finally shaken on the closing "Like Rain," which exhibits a sultriness that the rest of the EP could have benefited from. Producer and co-writer Joel Hamilton fails to provide Lee with a complex enough template to engage the listener, rendering Art of Forgetting, well, forgettable.