Brooklyn's Lorely Rodriguez, who records as Empress Of, is out with her aptly titled debut LP, Me. Eschewing the hazy, experimental feeling of her past short releases, Me opts for a more direct, minimal approach. Rodriguez wrote the songs while living alone in a small Mexican town, and a strong sense of isolation, coupled with a growing need for self-reliance, seeps through Me's synth instrumentation.
Though Me may have been born of solitude, Rodriguez knows how to stay connected — or, at least, she knows the best jams that tackle the subject. When The Week asked Rodriguez to curate a playlist for us, she responded, much to our delight, with her six favorite songs about — what else? — phone calls. "I have a playlist I listen to in my dressing room before I perform, and I noticed that a lot of the songs on it were songs about cell phones and how they play into relationships," Rodriguez said in an email. "It's such a huge part of how we interact with the people in our lives."
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