Avalon Emerson’s voice has many registers. On the opener »Eden«, it sounds – naturally processed – like Suzanne Vega on »Tom’s Diner« in 1987. A certain wholesomeness therefore settles in at the start of the full-time DJ and producer’s second dream-pop/indie album, and one begins to look forward to blissful slackening off in one’s own mind palace. Then, suddenly, blunt funk guitars enter, and one no longer feels oneself in “Eden” at all, but in a Check24 advert. Or worse still: somewhere in the musical oeuvre of Rhye. Fortunately, the horror is brief, because the fairy-like American has been struck: she wants to kiss faces, someone has stolen the favourite part of herself. Clear enough, then: yearning is very much permitted on Written Into Changes as well. That makes up for a lot.
»Happy Birthday«, with its basslines, recalls Men I Trust rather concretely. That is disorienting. On the title track, there is vocoder introspection and call-and-response passages between Avalon and Avalon. That convinces. Perhaps, in this segment, one should free oneself from the expectation that albums can do without epigonism altogether, however much one might be inclined to grant that possibility to Emerson on account of her free-spirited DJing style. While we are at it: »Wooden Star« drives its successful dramaturgy with flickering synths drawn from the big-room tech-house of the 2000s. These are the moments in which one begins to feel that Written Into Changes might have become not merely a solid album, but a great one.
