Max Bernardi is a rootsy chanteuse who paints Blaine Kern floats in her day job, a backstory which might explain her art-school approach to seduction: like Blondie’s Debbie Harry, the icon she most resembles vocally, she sounds disarmingly blasé on the seven songs of her debut EP. In fact, like Harry, she’s so disaffected she sounds flat in places where she’s not really. But she’s no New Wave ice princess—more like an Amy Winehouse with regional inflections.

The juxtaposition is decidedly distancing, even a little unsettling on the opening gambit of “Bad Girl” and “Leave Me Alone.” She eventually warms up a little, though, when she stretches out: the straight up swamp-pop of “I Dreamed by Starlight” (which also comes off like early Blondie in their warmer, girl-group phase), the bar-band snap of “Better Life,” and the Cajun waltz closer “Louisiana Troubador.” All of which suggests that the humility of the title is just a placeholder while she’s finding herself, an event that could be worth sticking around for. But first she’ll have to let us come closer.