On ‘Left Hand,’ Becca Mancari expands their pop palette

For Left Hand, Becca Mancari produced the album themselves, creating their most expansive work yet.

Sophia Matinazad/Courtesy of the artist

On “Over and Over,” the first single released from Becca Mancari’s Left Hand, they relive an important, early phase as a queer and gender expansive person: They call back to the youthful disregard and fleeting bravado felt after they escaped the rejection of the religious world in which they were raised, found a new home in chosen family and an uninhibited way of presenting themselves. “There is something to the feeling / Head hanging out of the window / Being OK that we don’t know,” they insist breezily. “And we can have it like we used to / Over and over and over and over again.”

That time in Mancari’s life coincided with the start of their career as a Nashville singer-songwriter, which presented its own constraints. In that realm, they quickly learned that sharp lyric writing, brisk storytelling and clever word play are celebrated above most other creative achievements, and production is treated as the job of an entirely separate set of professionals, usually men. They debuted with the rustling, arid folk-rock of 2017’s Good Woman, then drifted toward avant-pop fluidity with The Greatest Part. With longtime collaborator Juan Solorzano, Mancari cast off restrictions and finally produced themselves on Left Hand, creating their most expansive work yet.

Mancari wasn’t content to simply put word to melody this time. Instead, they play with sound in evocative…