Heart That’s Pounding gives you the feeling something transformative occurred in Sally Seltmann’s world since she released her last album in 2007. Compared with New Buffalo (her lauded faux-soft-jazz nom-de-plume), Heart That’s Pounding does not hide behind any pretenses or abstract lyrics. Her struggles are bared with plain-spoken honesty. Heart falls into the sweeter-than-most category of indie pop—close perhaps to “1234,” which she co-wrote with Feist—but Seltmann bares her fight with depression (“On the Borderline”), reconciling with herself and the desire to find true meaning and real experiences in the face of being a struggling musician. This is an album you should take to heart.
This article appears in Jun 3-9, 2010.