by Matthew Hirsch (@pocketsssssss)
Laetitia Tamko’s music, which she releases under the pseudonym Vagabon, builds and expands upon itself with every release. On her first project, the EP Persian Garden, she used her rock and singer-songwriter-style guitar — an instrument which she taught herself to play — to display her precocious and deeply emotive songwriting. Her proper debut album, 2017’s Infinite Worlds, took these skills and combined them with a burgeoning interest in electronic music to craft a unique sonic palette that somehow felt big and intimate simultaneously. On Vagabon, Tamko doubles down on her growing interest in electronic music, showcases her much-improved production chops, and still manages to display what drew many to her work in the first place — her expressive, endearing, and captivating personality.
The progression in Tamko’s style is evident very early on the new record. The second track, “Flood,” opens with orchestral, sweeping synth chords, skittering hi-hats, and Tamko’s delicate but assured voice before exploding into its anthemic chorus that sounds like the amalgamation of your favorite pop songs and Kill For Love-era Chromatics. Offsetting the poppiness of the chorus, Tamko sings, “I know / Even if I run from it / I’m still in it,” reminding listeners that, despite her exploration into newer sonic territory, she remains the same thinking, feeling, and inquiring person who made Infinite Worlds.
“Water Me Down,” another standout track from the record continues the motif of water introduced by “Flood.” However, while Tamko appeared overwhelmed and stressed in her attempts to escape the water in “Flood,” she sounds resigned to her situation in “Water Me Down,” singing, “You know me better than that / You know I hate it like that / It really waters me down.” “Water Me Down” also serves as the best example of Vagabon’s new sound. Driven by a thumping, four-to-the-floor beat and twinkling synths, the production contrasts with Tamko’s melancholy to craft a song that would come across equally well in a chic Williamsburg bar or in your headphones. Additionally, while many of the songs on Vagabon use guitar to accent their other driving elements, “Water Me Down” is completely devoid of any audible guitar allowing Tamko to exhibit just how much she has improved across the board as a musician and composer.
Before reprising the first song on the album, Tamko offers a throwback-style Vagabon track in “Every Woman.” Centered around acoustic guitar strums and her voice while surrounded by ethereal, atmospheric synths, Tamko delivers an intensely moving song for the fans who hoped that Vagabon would sound more similar to Infinite Worlds or Persian Garden. When Tamko sings “All the women in me are tired,” quoted from a poem by Nayyirah Waheed, you can tell she means it on a number of levels. She is tired of being othered in a white-dominated industry and genre. She is tired of, more generally, being a woman in a world that so often mistreats and casts to the side femme-indentifying people. She is tired of the expectations that people set upon her and her creativity and, nonetheless, she conveys this exhaustion eloquently and beautifully. The least we can do is listen and be thankful for what she shares with us.