Crush Songs, Karen O’s (the lead singer of the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s) debut solo album, sounds more like a collection of demo’s. With only acoustic guitar, hushed vocals, the occasional drum machine loop, and it’s cellphone-recording-like sound quality, Crush Songs sounds more like she’s trying to remember how the song goes, using whatever is around her, like someone looking back upon lost memories. Sometimes it even sounds like she’s writing the songs as she goes along, with only about 3 or 4 of the tracks reaching past 2 minutes in length, the whole album only about a half-hour long, and most of them trailing off into nothing seemingly too early. All that aside, there is beauty in these songs, like “Rapt”, some seeming like if they were more fully developed, could come together to be a real great album, but because of these choices, the songs are marred by its production quality, and I’m torn between the song’s beauty and the unsettling nature of its recording.