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Louise Goffin, who launched a major-label recording career while she was still a teenager, is marking her full-time return to the studio and the stage with a self-released CD, Bad Little Animals. Displaying a sophisticated song craft, Goffin balances highly personal lyrics with artful pop hooks, romantic melancholy with moving-on determination.

Music always been a significant part of Goffin’s life. As the daughter of songwriting legends Carole King and Gerry Goffin, her lineage piqued music industry interest early on. Goffin performed her first gig as a 17 year-old, opening for Jackson Browne at the Troubadour; a year later, she had released her debut album, Kid Blue. Goffin was clearly a natural, but her songs were not cast in her parents’ image. From the start, she possessed a certain toughness and self-assurance, a contemporary cool that took her work in a direction all her own.

Bad Little Animals was the product of much fruitful collaboration with old friends and new colleagues from Los Angeles, where she resides now, and London, her one-time home. The work they created together represents Goffin’s unique transatlantic sensibility. Among her collaborators are songwriter-arranger Marcella Detroit (formerly one-half of the London-based pop duo, Shakespear’s Sister), Anna Waronker (singer-songwriter of L.A. group That Dog), Ian Sefchick (from San Franciso rockers, Creeper Lagoon), Jodi Marr (composer-producer for international pop star Mika), John Parish (longtime cohort of Polly Harvey) extraordinary arranger Paul Buckmaster (mastermind behind the strings on Elton John’s classic LPs) and producer/musician Greg Wells (One Republic, Mika).

“Hurt People” is the most raw, unadorned track on Bad Little Animals. “Miss You,” on the other hand, has an almost teen-like exuberance, a modern take on a new wave sound. "More Of It,” played in 7/8 time, takes a very different approach: “I was inspired by some early Tricky albums and I wanted to capture a story-telling talk approach rather than a predictable pop melody.” “Pink Champagne, which opens the disc, channels a Scissors Sisters, naughty-but-nice feel, a woozy march around a bar-room floor, cocktail glass in hand.

“Archives,” a gorgeous ballad enhanced by Buckmaster’s eloquent string arrangement, is at the heart of both the CD lineup and the process that brought Goffin back to the studio. Says Goffin, "’Archives’ is one of my favorite songs on the CD. When I wrote the song, it felt like a monumental task to take my creative self out of the house and into the home studio I rarely recorded in, yet had co-built. My muse and confidence had become almost anorexic through years of neglecting it, even though it was in favor of developing other facets and strengths I now value in my life, including the joy and challenge of raising two boys. I showed up at the piano with no pre-planned agenda, and ‘Archives’ came out. I was able to record what I had played on the piano, and the piano became home for me again, almost like church -- a spiritual place to rest my hands and soul.”

Bad Little Animals represents a musical journey Goffin embarked upon when she had barely grown up; the emotions she’s revealed and the stories she’d told since then have kept us listening for years. This is the sound of life, as well as work, in progress.

-- Michael Hill