Married in Berdichev

On Friends and Lovers, Married in Berdichev’s last release, Brittany Gould crafted delicate, hauntingly beautiful pop songs that featured girlish yet poignant and affecting vocals, qualities that have carried over to the new record. Listening to Cold Feet, Warm Hearts! is like waking up from a restful night’s sleep after a long run of hard days during which you start to question everything in your life. Although the songs are tinged with a tangible sense of melancholy, every turn of phrase contains a knowing smile, the kind that comes from wisdom gained through bonding in difficult times. The disc’s overarching theme is love — not the hackneyed variety that often gets played up in rock ballads, but a love for someone that’s felt deeply and gently, in spite of inherent flaws and failings. Cold Feet, Warm Hearts! turns out to be a fitting title for an album that is rooted in the realization that ultimately cold and hardened hearts wither and die.