For some reason, there was a brief period in my life a while back in which every single person who learned of my early Red House Painters obsession immediately responded with some variation of "You know who else you would love? Tara Jane O'Neil."  At the time, I did not think the two artists had much in common at all, aside from the superficial traits of being both slow and melancholy, but I have always enjoyed hearing O'Neil whenever she resurfaces.  This time, after a five year solo album hiatus, she has resurfaced on Kranky–the perfect home for someone who sounds like Grouper's more sophisticated older sister.
The overarching aesthetic of this album is a drifting, dreamlike sense of being barely there, but it is a masterfully sculpted, deliberate, and hypnotic one.  Consequently, Where Shine New Lights is best experienced as a complete album, so O'Neil's sensuous, half-lit reverie is allowed enough time to fully seep in and cast its enveloping spell. On a few occasions, however, Tara emerges from her languourous bliss-haze with something that resembles a possible single, like the achingly beautiful "This Morning Glory," which augments its wonderful melody and swooning hooks with atypically forceful accoutrements like drums, strummed rhythm guitar, and discernible lyrics.  That is inarguably the album's centerpiece, but each of the remaining few "real songs" are similarly wonderful, particularly the sad waltz of "Elemental Finding," though the folky, lilting "To Lull The Going" is certainly quite lovely as well.
The rest of New Lights shares a lot of common ground with labelmates Windy & Carl, offering up quite a bit of warm guitar/organ shimmer and cooing, reverb-heavy vocals.  Tara does that quite well too, of course, but it is always welcome when her too-often-latent experimental tendencies and other more distinctive touches surface.  Those tendencies increasingly come to the fore as the album gets closer to the end, culminating in the closing "New Lights for a Sky," which features bowed cymbals or gongs, some actual dissonant notes, and tensely bowed strings.  Less overt instances are strewn about elsewhere though, as Tara's music is so extreme in its minimalism and understatement that even the smallest events can seem quite dramatic.  In fact, some of my favorite moments, such as the clanging buoy sounds in "Welcome" or the trilling guitar in "The Signal, Winds," probably would have gone completely unnoticed if they had appeared on an album by anyone else.
This is a great album, but that comes with a large caveat: it requires quite a bit of patience and attention to fully unlock its magic.  With the exception of perhaps "This Morning Glory," it is very easy to imagine most casual listeners dismissing this as something between "vaguely pretty" and "too sleepy."  It certainly is both pretty and sleepy, but there is much hidden depth to be found as well, as O'Neil excels at creating the quietest of quiet storms.  That, I think, is a large part of her appeal, as connecting with this album feels a lot like being let in on a secret.  Also, I can think of few other albums right now that I would rather wake up to on a frigid winter morning, as almost no one does "warmly narcotic" quite as wonderfully as Tara.  Very timely release, Kranky.
 
 
Read More
