Girlhood and All of Its Confusion: Late Start by Carol Ades

martinamarier

Existing in the world as a twenty something-year-old isn’t easy. Existing in that same space as a twenty something-year-old queer girl sometimes feels impossible. On her debut album Late Start, Carol Ades takes these feelings, examines them with a magnifying glass, a pen, and a sweet voice, and lays them out for all of us to get a good look.

Ades’s music has held my hand through tough times for a few years now and is on near constant rotation through the fall and winter seasons. I was lucky enough to see her open for Lizzy McAlpine in 2022, and her energy on stage was absolutely electric. One second she was cracking jokes in between songs and the next, she was singing one of the most gut-wrenching lyrics I’d ever heard. After the show, she hung out at her merch stand, and I was able to tell her how amazing her performance was on my way out. Since then, I’ve adored watching her musical journey grow towards this release, and I am so glad to have these songs occupying my playlists just in time for those gloomy autumn walks.

When I think of Ades as an artist, I think about girlhood. In the album art and in her stage performances, she wears a school uniform jumper. That immediately takes me back to my uniformed elementary and middle school days; the image of a girl in a jumper and a white polo shirt conveys a kind of innocence that only comes from experiences like being sheltered at a young age or remaining ignorantly optimistic when there used to be no other option. In her personal writings on Instagram and nearly all of her songs, she speaks directly to young girls, or girls in general, who unknowingly go through many of the same feelings. Sometimes you don’t know that those feelings are normal until you hear the right song.

The singles off this album, specifically “Dreams” and “Hope is a Scary Thing,” dive even deeper to touch on queer themes of girlhood, coming to terms with one’s sexuality, and swearing off love only to fall for someone you least expected. “Mom Song” tackles parental relationships head-on and gives us the lyric, “You were learning, You were also just a person,” something we’re often guilty of forgetting towards our parents or older family members. “Furniture” quickly became my favorite track. The line “…never gonna know the way it ends, So I’ll just rearrange the furniture again” perfectly encapsulates those feelings of spiraling and repeatedly trying to maneuver your own thoughts in a way that makes you feel less hopeless. It reminded me a bit of “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac in its acoustic pre-chorus and comforting yet raw lyricism.

As the title suggests, Late Start holds many of those feelings of being behind. Whether that’s in your career path, your romantic or platonic relationships, or just general milestones that people at your age are checking off at an unbelievable rate, none of us are immune to feeling like we received different life directions than everyone else. Ades guides the listener through these complex emotions and, by the end, makes you feel as if maybe you weren’t so lost in the first place. Maybe everyone moves at a different pace, and it’s okay to take your time discovering who you are and getting through the bad stuff to try and find the good.