Much like recording-artist contemporaries St. Vincent and Tune-Yards, McLean pursues both the visceral and intellectual on her new album—and its new single, “Albertine.”

“I borrowed the name of Proust’s lover in Remembrance of Things Past for this song, because of a description he gives of her when they first meet—she appears fractured to Proust, with every changing angle or shift in light she’s different, a new person. She’s slippery and he can’t quite get a handle on who she is,” explains McLean. “Which ‘Albertine’ is the real one? Is it Proust who creates or perceives these differences and can each one be true? Is she reliable? Is he unreliable? I wanted to take that notion of an unknowable, unpredictable, and capricious lover and write about how the moment the delicate, exquisite, and irreversible tear in the relationship may finally bring clarity.”

The cold, close vocals on “Albertine” are an intimate, whispered confession in a sharp and bracing landscape. The heart swells from strings coupled with aloof, dissonant backing vocals which lead toward an explosive, and stabbing climax. The puzzle of the person McLean sings about is left unsolved, but the puzzler finds strength in abandoning the search for new pieces.

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