The album artwork for Pictoria Vark’s The Parts I Dread depicts a greyscale illustration of Victoria Park against a wide, blue ocean backdrop. Much like that imagery, the songs throughout the Iowa City-based songwriter and bass extraordinaire’s full-length debut channels what might initially seem like a significantly smaller moment against a vastness Park packs in with descript reflections on adulting, relationships, and moving around personal hells as those memories haunt her many sea changes every step of the way.

Funneled through an emo-adjacent alternative rock craft, each track is steady rolling thunder that can either crest in her voice’s calm, or crash waves of emotions. Glints of sunlight and outside noise peak their way into her present by its concluding moments of “Friend Song”. Even then, it feels like Pictoria Vark has assigned a melancholy wistfulness to its passing.

Highlights: “Wyoming”, “I Can’t Bike”, “Friend Song”

Pictoria Vark’s The Parts I Dread is available now on Get Better Records.

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