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| Track list: 1. Quiet Corner 2. Migration 3. The Sun Today 4. No Thought of Leaving 5. Cold Moon 6. Shapeless 7. Shift 8. Roy Running time: 37 minutes Released: 2015 |
So another insert now, and another new purchase. This one ordered last night after loving Alela Diane & Wild Divine. I'm hoping this will keep up the hit rate.
The opening sounds are rather lighter, airier. The vocal has a weightless quality, even where it goes deeper in tone, and the guitar work that forms the basis of the song is flowery, until the point where it is all cut back, a deliberate change of pace. There is something a little unreal about the sound, it too rounded, too bright. I lack suitable words to put my disquiet with this sound into text. It just feels as though it isn't quite grounded?
Not the strongest start, then, but the first little ripples of Migration are better. This is very sparse indeed, and so laid back it may as well be prone. It is softer, warmer and more grounded. They leave space aplenty in the first couple of minutes, and it becomes more like a leisurely delivered topic speech than a song in terms of tempo. Diane's voice is completely comfortable in this space though, and although some of the strings go a little stark in places I really like the overall effect on this one, especially when the sound grows in the latter half.
I am treating this as a lazy evening, though really I had hoped to get the listen done earlier in the day. To be honest if I hadn't really, really been struck by Alela Diane's music in the last couple of weeks I doubt I would have found the impetus to do a single listen this weekend, let alone two. In the grander scheme of things these two posts don't actually advance me, since both were new purchases and both slipped in before my current position.Thus far I don't find this anything like as appealing as the album I listened to last night, it's a little too stripped back, a little too reflective. What sold me on Wild Divine was the energy from the band, ditched here in place of Francesconi's guitar work. He brings definition, sure, but there is a dearth of urgency and tone.
Alela Diane doesn't half have a wonderful voice though.
I find the pace too low, the approach a little too noodling. The guitar work feels more suited to a solo bedroom exploration of the strings than a recorded performance, an exercise in self relaxation. Alas that doesn't translate well. Things pick up a little when more is added to the arrangement, but I can't help but feel this album is lacking by comparison to everything of hers that I have been enjoying of late. I think this is the problem of expectation. I bought this excited, expectant and hopeful. I bought Cusp blind, unknowing and was charmed. Each disc acquired since has been shaped in its appreciation by that charm - either failing to impress by comparison or surviving the pulling up of standards.
Perhaps in another mood this would appeal. To be clear I don't think it is bad as such, it's more that it is slow, lonely, and intimate - the stripped back sound, just guitar and vocal, the deliberate pacing, it feels a little confessional, a private conversation that we just happen to have been invited to assess but not partake in. There are times when this works and there are times when it perversely feels like it drives a wedge between me as the listener and the performance. Sometimes those different impressions are made within the same song, and I am struggling a little with the contrast between those moments.
Final track, Roy, has a return to the sounds that defied my words in the opening moments. It seems fitting that it ends as it began, with me far from sure. First listen caveats apply, but whilst last time out proved that a strong first impression can be made, this album didn't leave anything like that.
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