And so The Loneliest Time is also a return on several levels, including a return to celebrating music together in person around the world, and it’s Jepsen’s best collection of songs since 2015’s fantastic pop masterstroke Emotion. I still have The Loneliest Time on frequent rotation several months after its release, and the songs haven’t yet lost their appeal, probably because the sonic palette is more mature and diverse this time around, the musicianship solid and deeper, although about half of the album is as playful as one would expect. Having witnessed the kids belting along loudly in unison to songs like “Talking to Yourself” at her concert, a trend that’s gotten a bit overwhelming at other pop shows that I’ve attended recently (let’s all just let the singer sing, you guys), I’m sure that’s the upbeat strand of Jepsen’s catalog that most of her audience prefers.
Yet the cute guy dancing next to me and I agreed that the breezily percussive, semi-tropical “Western Wind,” co-written and produced by Rostam Batmanglij, was one of the best songs we heard that night, and it’s equally among the finest cuts on the album, the sort of jam that puts its listeners directly into a trance and doesn’t soon let go. “Joshua Tree,” with its vivid reminiscence of hanging out at night in the California desert with one’s friends decked out in glow-in-the-dark body paint, feels just as transporting. But Jepsen is just as adept at keeping things friendly and accessible in the way only she can, as on the song “So Nice,” which wisely benefits from the R&B-flavored backdrop of her supporting vocalists, who are also a key part of her songs on tour. Carly Rae knows how to make fun of herself in the right ways, too, as she details her history of beyond shifty boyfriends on “Beach House” and kisses off another one on the more contemplative “Go Find Yourself or Whatever.”
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