B-Side Guys

Camille Schmidt’s debut EP “Good Person” is a stirring introduction to a singer-songwriter who balances raw vulnerability with incisive self-reflection. Recorded in just a few days with her Brooklyn-based band and producer Phil Weinrobe (known for his work with indie folk luminaries like Adrianne Lenker and Florist), these six songs feel less like polished studio creations than private journal entries brought to vivid life. Schmidt’s unfiltered lyrics and unadorned delivery invite the listener into her inner sanctum as she navigates the thorny terrains of self-worth, codependency, and existential yearning.

The sparse opener “Your Game” sets the tone, with Schmidt’s voice quavering over delicate fingerpicked guitar as she deconstructs an emotionally manipulative relationship. Lines like “You don’t really want to date me/ You would rather inflate me like a life raft you know will carry you home” cut to the quick, exposing the toxic undercurrents beneath a veneer of affection. The simmering resentment boils over on “Red and Blue,” where pensive verses give way to an explosive chorus tinged with anguished sax: “What if I want you to change and you don’t want to do it?”

But Schmidt reserves her most unsparing scrutiny for herself. On the wrenching “Wake Up,” she castigates herself for remaining ensnared in a soul-crushing dynamic, her voice straining as she pleads “get out of it, get out of it” like a mantra. The Elliott Smith-esque “Fakeout Ending” grapples with the ways external validation can warp authentic self-expression, lamenting “it’s so easy to ruin what you like by showing it to people.”

Threaded through the EP is a palpable ache to transcend the prisons of the psyche, to attain some measure of hard-won peace. The waltzing “Bumblebee Drinks Lavender” finds Schmidt caught between longing for escape – “a kind of calm I’ll never have” – and fatalistic resignation to old patterns. Yet the lilting closer “Bird on a Telephone Wire” dares to dream of a lightness of being, an existence unburdened by shame and self-recrimination: “I have this dream I drink a potion/ Turn my body to a bird/ Perch on a telephone wire/ Feel the wind and just observe.”

Clocking in at a concise 16 minutes, “Good Person” leaves the listener wanting more, eager to spend more time immersed in Schmidt’s intricately rendered emotional landscapes. Her plain-spoken poetry finds the universal in the deeply personal, transforming her individual travails into something simultaneously intimate and expansive.

Much credit is due to Weinrobe’s uncluttered production, which foregrounds Schmidt’s vocals and lends the proceedings an almost voyeuristic immediacy. The interplay with her backing band – guitarist Sam Talmadge, drummer Pele Greenberg, and bassist Eli Heath – feels organic and unforced, as though they’re not so much performing songs as channeling them.

Ultimately, what makes “Good Person” such a compelling listen is Schmidt’s unflinching emotional honesty, her willingness to confront the darkest recesses of her psyche with clear-eyed candor. She may sing of yearning to “feel and just observe,” but her powers of observation are already keenly attuned, able to spin the messy vicissitudes of the human heart into something achingly beautiful.

In an indie folk landscape often awash in platitudes and maudlin sentimentality, Schmidt’s voice feels bracingly authentic, a much-needed breath of fresh air. With any luck, this is just the beginning of a long and fruitful body of work from an artist with a rare gift for transmuting pain into poetry. “Good Person” may chronicle Schmidt’s struggles to live up to its title, but in baring her soul with such courage and grace, she’s created something unequivocally great.