The Little Miss - chasing the "American Dream"

There is something strange about The Little Miss (the moniker of Hayley Johnson) or maybe to be more clear something strange about her music. Her aesthetic on American Dream which is this kind of 60's folk / country and western meets the American songbook (or something like that) is done with such an earnest tone it is hard to discern if she is embracing that time or shooting barbs at it. Her vocal presentation is engaging but again pulls in retro tones. It is the kind of yearning for simpler times although from a Geo-political aspect, from a Civil Rights aspect those times were not so rosy and let's not even get into how women fared. There was darkness behind some of those white picket fences and part of me thinks that The Little Miss taps into the irony of it all. It is that kind of parallel shift that would make it feel right at home in a Wes Anderson movie or even as a song in Handmaid's Tale to punctuate the utter horror presented. Maybe I am looking way too deeply. I do love her sound and aesthetic so much. Maybe I should just enjoy The Little Miss's  American Dream. In it she is still, after all, chasing freedom.

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Robb Donker