This new single from Laila Smith, The Most Important Thing About Me is That I Do My Best, tells a whole story in its title—more even than some songs do with a whole verse worth of lyrics—and it tells us a lot about Laila Smith, as well, but it doesn’t tell us everything.
And if you think that Smith has fit a lot into one title, just take a listen to what this exciting new writer and singer can fit into the full three minutes of the song. It might seem like it’s going to start out as the kind of simple singer-songwriter piece that you’ve heard a hundred times or more, but we get the first hint that all is not what it seems thirty seconds in with the introduction of a gorgeously captured analog synthesizer and then the whole thing is upended another thirty seconds on with a heavy crashing of electric guitars. From there, the song never seems to stay in one place for more than a few bars at a time. It’s restless in its search for a new sound and a new phrase or a new way of exciting your expectations.
Described by Smith as a song of ‘haunted Americana’, that’s an apt assessment. There is certainly a haunting of Phoebe Bridgers in here, and the specter of Wilco flashes across the track once or twice, too. There’s a moonlight sliver of Angel Olsen or Adrienne Lenker in there, as well, and the ghosts of Courtney Barnett or Pixies can play across the performance, at times, but really, the song is mostly made up of something completely new. An otherworldly earthiness that grounds the song but also lets it grab and possess you, and float away with your senses. Something completely Laila Smith.
“If I could make a bunch of money, I would, I would, I would”, Smith sings at various points in this song. If the rest of the songs from Smith’s upcoming EP Something Dreadful’s Going To Happen are as good as this one is, and as long as she continues to do her best, there’s no reason why she can’t make any amount of money that she wants to from her music.
Written by Matthew Ingate
