“Red rock and dust, the mountains look like red meat chunks,” Alaska Reid sings off her new album of dreamy, grungy, poppy tunes, called Disenchanter. What she calls “Mountain Pop,” it is something new from the up-and-coming generation of female composers and her pop construction is as compelling as her descriptive story telling.

Starting with “French Fries,” a story about an evolving friendship that plays like a movie, including the undercurrent of bad boyfriends and splintering paths, it is an invitation to a life that is at once romantic and filled with the disappointing parts of reality. “I see the romance, but as I get older I see what’s lost,” she sings on perhaps the most hopeful song of the record, “Seeds.”

“Work at the bar / Laugh at the guys bumping into us girls / Had freedom cuz I had my car / and I wasn’t trying to fall in love just figure out the world.” Splitting her time between Montana and LA, the songs are all autobiographical musings on what it is to grow up, without any of the cliché trappings. Whether it’s the few parts with just her and her guitar, or the full on pop assault, which hits you like a breath, her songs communicate, and communicate well.

The thing that strikes me about the record is how confident and completely unique Reid is in her own style and voicing, which is sometimes prettily sung, sometimes practically spoken, but always over compelling chords and beats. Each song is filled with clever poetry that captures scene and sentiment, and the album is cohesive without ever getting old or repetitious.

Love interests, twenty-something adventures, life’s yearnings and depressions. She lays everything on the line. And though she sings about playing half full clubs, she’s opened for the likes of Porches, Charli XCX, Magdalena Bay, and Caroline Polachek. It seems like she’s on her way up, by being honest of the ways she’s been down, and by, simply, getting down. It’s a compelling record, that I think will find a permanent spot on many people’s playlists, especially coming-of-age women like herself.

Order Disenchanter by Alaska Reid HERE