This fourth solo album the the lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of Australian indie band Howling Bells deals with heavy subjects with a light touch, a sparseness of style, and emotional potency. Among the standouts is Old World, which narrates a personal visit to Prague and imagining horrors of history, as a city from which her grandmother fled the Nazi occupation with “images of ashes piled high” and more, her voice ghostly alongside acoustic guitar, then a swell of orchestral strings and subtle glockenspiel. Overall, it is her voice that’s fully exposed, delicate and hovering beautifully like a bird, especially on the acoustic Carry Me, sparse resonant guitar of Driving Now (in which producer Ben Hillier’s deep voice also appears as backing), or the opening title track (“No ties to bind / No call to arms / No cross to bear”) but also on muted more indie guitar songs such as Motionless or Mother Natures Son, in which there’s a still a stripped back feel. The weightless theme comes across in different contexts, from ‘no ties to bind" on title track, the horror thoughts of floating ashes in Old World, and both on Daily Rituals, which mixes the light and the heavy simultaneously - “I am light as a cloud, and nothing will bring me down, not the short sharp shock of everything but the cold staggered crash of reality …”, while the dark and beautiful Ceremony has echoes of classic indie-period PJ Harvey. Simple, but effective, this is a powerful, less-is-more approach. Out on Agricultural Audio.
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