Lhasa

When you get hold of a new album by an artist who has given you some of the most beautiful musical moments of your life, excitement and the fear of disappointment battle it out. It’s best to clear the mind, stay calm and, if you are a journalist, don your white lab coat.

Studying the album cover, three observations could be clues. The illustration is a stencil portrait, the kind you can find in any town in the world. The title of the album has been reduced to a minimum: the name of the artist. And having successfully tried out singing in Spanish, French and English, Lhasa has this time focussed on the latter. Had the Canadian singer been tempted to stay within her comfort zone? Had she renounced the baroque finery of her universe? With the tight band recorded live and her vocal inflections a touch brighter, the first few notes seemed to confirm an emphasis on fluidity and simplification.

Solely responsible for the production of this album, Lhasa has certainly stripped back her sound. But it is quickly apparent that her world has lost none of its singularity. She has taken care to inject it with the four elements essential to life: the terrestrial tempo of the rhythm section, the airy flights of the pedal steel guitar, the aquatic undulations of the harp and, above all, the sacred fire of her voice. And the fragile songs take shape and blossom with a dreamy weightlessness.

Here and there, with a sense of kinship rather than imitation, other artists come to mind: Nico in the elegiac plaintiveness of What Kind of Heart, or David Lynch in the ghostly hotel band feel on The Lonely Spider or Love Came Here. The swampy guitar on A Thousand And One Nights conjures up Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter. But these references, intentional or not, are in the best of taste and only add to the enchanting character of this album which is a strong addition to the faultless discography of one of the greatest artists of our times.

Video for "Rising"