Slow It Down, Mini Trees’ second album and their first to be self-released, is both a record of letting go and of embracing. Documenting a transitional time in her life, LA artist Lexi Vega (aka Mini Trees) uses her sophomore record as an autopsy report on a life that wasn’t working for her while also gently reaching out to what else is possible. “Slow It Down is, in hindsight, a record where I unknowingly wrote myself out of a life I couldn’t live anymore,” Vega explains. She left her unhappy marriage, her management, and her label, deciding to pursue her dreams on her own terms.
That stomachache of worry, anxiety, hope, and possibility all swirl about on Slow It Down. It’s a record that revels in the sinking feeling, following those loose threads of thought about who to blame. Sometimes the finger is pointed outwards, like the fidgety “Close”, a veiled attack from Vega to those who have dangled the carrot in front of her in the music industry for years. Elsewhere the blame goes both ways: “On Repeat” dissects dissolved optimism as Vega repeats the song’s central mantra of “It’s funny how we used to think we could’ve had it all”; the jittery “It’s Not You” tries to realign the blame between parties with the buzz of a post-blowout comedown. The album’s epicentre, “Hollow” is practically a separation happening in real time. “You found someone and we both stopped calling / I found a better way to cope with sorrow,” Vega sings as a clatter of percussion crescendos in the middle of the track, a rare moment where sonically everything teeters off the edge. The threat of everything being swallowed seems real, allowing the melancholy of the track to ring out louder.
For the most part though, Vega keeps the finger pointed at herself. There’s introspection on the fizzy opening track “Spinning” (“I’m still getting older while I’m going nowhere”) as she describes the Sisyphean task of always having to work harder than the last time and feeling like no distance has been covered. On “Sludge” she soars as she reflects on how buoyant hope of the past is no longer useful. “Take me back when I was young / And I used to live like it’d all work out for the best,” she sings on one of the album’s most freeing moments. Slow It Down is an album for this in-between space, reckoning with your past self, trying to hold onto the remnants of pure joy that started a dream while also bringing them into the harsh reality of adulthood.
All of that condenses into the stripped back final title track, as Vega ruminates after becoming an aunt and how family shifts ideas of priorities, value, and possibility. “So I’ll learn to let go ’cause we’re circling it now / I know I’m just scared, can we slow it down?” she asks with the pang of tangible anxiety. It’s a well-needed final moment on the album, laying bare the fear Vega is wrestling with. While Slow It Down does suffer a similar fate of her 2021 debut Always In Motion in needing a little more sonic variety across its runtime, this does allow it to feel like an enclosed space, the kind of nook you nestle into during a moment of heightened worry. For 37 minutes Slow It Down both hears and recognises you, letting you sit with the angst.
The main draw of Mini Trees’ music has always been Vega’s voice though. She may well bear similarities to other acts of the same ilk (Phoebe Bridgers, Hajk, Clairo), but her delivery always has a way of sounding more tender, more lived in, more naked than her counterparts. She sings like every word cuts to the bone, like the experience she’s describing is still very much fresh and raw. That Slow It Down also serves as a document of slowly realised queerness for Vega (“my subconscious was already telling the truth I wasn’t ready to face”) makes it an even starker listen when you take a little time to unpack it. Sit with it and breathe; the album’s title is a good starting instruction to taking it in.
