Without You: June McDoom's tracklist has a plan

Without You is a 12-track album, released August 4 on Jagjaguwar, and it runs about 36 minutes. The first thing to notice is not a sound but a shape. Eight of the twelve tracks sit between 2:29 and 3:28. Two tracks, Grandpa and Weaver, run under two minutes. Only two cross the four-minute mark: the title track, Without You, at 4:27, and Mountain, one second longer at 4:28. That is a hand-built running order.

McDoom places the title track at track 2, after the 2:59 Human Angel. It is a confident move. She does not lead with her thesis; she opens smaller and lets the title cut be the second step. The record then moves through Outside The Window, Forever, Get Out Of My Life, Grandpa, Dream Dub, and Memory before Mountain arrives with its 4:28 weight. Searching To Find and Weaver follow, and the closer is Follow The Light.

What works is the organizational discipline. The record is not a pile of songs. The short cuts make space, and the two long tracks anchor different parts of the album. The title track and Mountain share nearly the same length, which gives the record a symmetry: one long song near the front, one near the back. The song titles also pull in useful directions. Human Angel, Memory, Grandpa, Weaver, Mountain. They keep the mood personal, with Dream Dub as the outlier.

The weakness is that the structure can only promise so much. A 1:09 Grandpa and a 1:33 Weaver might be the exact breathers the album needs, or they might be placeholders that a longer version would cut. The tracklist cannot settle that. Still, a record with this much care in its proportions is ahead of most. This is a qualified 3.5: the framework is strong, and the music has to meet it. If the songs are as precise as the running order, Without You is a small, sharp album. If not, it is still a pleasing set of instructions for how to hear it.

The tracklist

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