CARY GRACE – Tygerland

Door 13 Music 2015

CA RY GRACE - Tygerland

CARY GRACE –
Tygerland

Psychedelic explorations of delicate, yet daring, spirit of artiste whose dreams have no limit.

“I live between the lines,” sings Cary Grace on this record – her ultimate creative statement – and although such subtlety can be lost on the listener if they latch onto the Brit-based American’s otherworldly aspect, that’s what defines “Tygerland”; it’s what implied rather than explicitly laid bare – but the artist’s soul is stark naked on the songs offered here, the eight pieces composed over an eight-year period, despite the music’s sonic complexity.

While the wonderful wobble of the album’s title track, where six-strings-led blizzard of licks make way for a spaced-out synth bliss, creates a wordless sci-fi experience, the equally cinematic, immersive twenty-minute expanse of “Windsong” bears an FX-enhanced fairy-tale-to-reality narrative with vocalizing kept to a minimum. Cary’s electronics spice up “Orange Sky” whose multitude of echoes dances unhurriedly in this perfect impression of the solar wind, which is kissed by strum and spurred by melodic drone, yet the acidic assault of “Cyanide” conceals delicate balladry, rendering heavy riffs romantic and solo lysergic.

Significantly different, albeit just as emotional, “Limelight” is bossa-like and seductively lucid, if deceptively monotone, while “Razorwire” – also full of powerful twang – must locate its lyricism in a more abstract way to reflect on the “broken glass cathedral” metaphor with delicate whooshes and cosmic meander of Grace’s ivories. In these circumstances, the dark, bluesy playfulness of “War Child” will hit hard, displaying Cary’s poetry at her Dylan-nightmare best, before retrofuturistic sounds kick in and gradually take the drift toward hippiedom.

Still, it’s “Into The Indigo” that provides the most majestic trip, and not for nothing Grace herself should strap on electric guitar to soar alongside chamber-to-country violin. “Nothing is impossible that’s possible to dares,” intones Grace on this record, and dare she does: after all, to frame the fearful symmetry of no-man’s land is a female prerogative.

****

September 21, 2018

Category(s): Reviews
Tags: ,

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *