Outer Spaces - Gazing Globe

Cara Beth Satalino, known as Outer Spaces, channels her sweet, mystic voice along with a wide but comforting array of guitar. The Baltimore artist comes across initially as a singer/songwriter, but there is more beneath the surface on her second full album, Gazing Globe.

In the three years since her debut, Satalino has grown yet more confident her sound and composition. Guitar dip and weave on ‘Truck Song’, beginning with a single guitar giving off the alt-female vibe which has been used by other stellar names recently. Waxahatchee is probably a good comparison here, laying smoother melodies over picked electric guitars which sound like they’re stuck in the nineties - in a good way.

‘YWLGOML’ churns over a relationship, chewing the fat with the toe-tapping beat and blaring out a strange bit of saxophone before returning to the repetition of the title's acronym. The real gem in this album, however, is ‘Album For Ghosts’ - a real contender for song of the year. The lyrics feel relatable yet mystic and poetic, with the offered prophecy of “Thunder follows lightning, wait and see” all over a middle section which builds the momentum found in the imagery, and if the chorus isn’t stuck maddeningly in your head then you’ll have missed a trick.

So good is that song that the album is worth a high score even without talking about the rest, but there’s more in Satalino’s arsenal here. ‘Paper Flowers’ has melancholy, flanger-driven guitar strums and the faintest smattering of a keyboard, while ‘Teapot #2’ throws up a see-saw of questions on existence and more trippy imagery. 

‘I See Her Face’ feels like it could be a lost Rumours-era B-side from Fleetwood Mac, bassline pulsing behind the drifting vocals and ringing strums. “Time teaches you to forget the things that haven’t happened yet” is the kind of impossible riddle you have to wrap your mind around before Satalino asks “do you know her?”. There’s so much to love about these songs and unpack, that it will need multiple listens to drink it all in.

While not every track is a solid gold gem, the good stuff is spread around so much as to make this an enjoyable listen every time. Having found a really firm footing, it’ll be interesting to see how Satalino progresses under the Outer Spaces name and whether she chooses to branch out into more instruments to vary the sound, but either way, this is an album to cherish for 2019.