On her debut, Honey Blue Star, Mexico City’s Carrie was just one of many contemporary artists as taken with the idea of being an electronic-music singer-songwriter as with the actual task at hand: writing good songs and painting them with a seamless combination of strummed and digital sounds. While 1981 doesn’t solve the problem–Carrie is still self-aware in the studio–it comes damn close. Songs like the title track, with its incessant beat, and “Pollock,” with its lack thereof, prove her willingness to explore. But it’s on “Stumble” that Carrie fulfills her potential: A tick-tock beat and sustained synth awash in Carrie’s Cocteau Twins-esque vocal reverb and Ben Watt-style songwriting comprise the singer’s best effort yet.