Finding yourself associating the name of Claire Rousay with an essentially pop record, albeit imbued with ambient hints and atmospheric expansions, may seem like a gamble for those who have only followed her most recent recording stages. In reality, the Canadian musician transplanted to San Antonio, in addition to boasting youthful militancy in various rock bands, had repeatedly expressed, in her still short but extremely prolific artistic career, a certain curiosity for the song form, both in the form of fragments – a flash in “Peak Chroma” of the excellent “A Softer Focus” – which has an episodic element embedded in purely instrumental works (“Smaller Pools” in the digital EP “An Afternoon Whine” co-signed with More Eaze).
This attitude now becomes central, generating a first piece in which melody and words take center stage, relegating to the background the elegy of everyday life built from the numerous environmental recordings collected with maniacal constancy. In “Sentiment” the need to communicate emotions in a frank way prevails – as the author herself declares in the liner notes – and to do so she makes use of truly melancholy introspective songs, similar in tone to the writing of intimate singer-songwriters such as Elliott Smith, it is no coincidence that his youthful passion never subsided enough to try to revisit one of his songs. The musical coordinates are different, the guitar is skeletal, the voice constantly transfigured byautotunethe staid rhythm that gives shape to an essential slowcore, refined by textures of strings and electronics, packaged with the help of a circle of collaborators among which we still find the companion Mari Maurice/More Eaze, Theodore Cale Schafer and Meg Duffy/Hand Habits.
It is a diary of direct stories, deliberately lo-fi in spirit – even if carefully packaged, according to the lesson of Sparklehorse – which speak of the sense of inadequacy (“Head”), of suffered loves (“Asking For It”) and desire (“It Could Be Anything”). Songs essential in form, a succession of open-hearted confessions whose only filter is the manipulation of the voice, an effective technique – even if cloyingly redundant in the long run – to convey the indolence with which every feeling is perceived.
There sound artistdealing with a partially new material, does not however renounce its usual compositional style, always present as a structural imprint, at times left free to channel itself into ambient digressions characterized by found sounds and field recording warm and enveloping (“iii”) or in dry textual flows focused on a profound ache of living (“4pm”). And it is here that the sound finds fullness, drawing imaginative scenarios pervaded by delicate beauty (“Sycamore Skylight”).
Considering Rousay's eclecticism and desire to experiment, it is difficult to understand whether we are faced with an isolated chapter or a new outlet to be explored, but it is certain that, net of elements to be refined and processes to be brought into greater focus, it's a plausible change of skin for a talented artist, capable of intersecting in a non-trivial way songwriting and avant-garde.
05/14/2024
Antonio Santini for SANREMO.FM