Review

Tara Jane O’Neil

Where Shine New Lights

Kranky • 2014

Sleep. That’s what you get from »Where Shine New Lights«. You can doze away, while your soul breezes freely. On her 7th record, Tara Jane O’Neil has created impressive atmospheres without ever disbanding the actual track. At those points where others dissolve everything in pure sound, the 41-years-old musician leaves recognizable bits and pieces, which slowly fade, blur and dissolve. She interweaves her drone with a streak of violin, pure ecstasy always leaves a stain of a melody. The American songwriter and multi-instrumentalist has come up with a fantastic dream, ranging from feverish to soothing. »The Lull The Going« is tumbling along a guitar, while »Bellow Below As Above« aims straight for the deepest depths. Compared to many of her colleagues, Tara Jane O’Neil has already found her sound, experiments are limited to a minimum. Even »Glow Now« finds its light, eventually, and starts to shine over the rapture. As a story-teller, O’Neil never takes the front seat, words are only part of the whole concept, not its surface. For that purpose, her voice is more than perfect. It’s a light whisper in the record’s own murmur. Ambient and drone are part of the songwriting, all of them are combined to form her very own sound, which might actually be the perfect opposite of the atmosphere made by Grouper. This record is light and spacey, even though it all takes part in the smallest space. It’s a forty-minutes-slumber without a rude awakening. There’s nothing but space, created by O’Neil with only a few sounds, projected onto the wall. Twelve tracks, twelve beautiful paintings, showing an impressively broad and dreamy soundscape.