Light in the Dark, the debut album from Eau the Music, plays with a sound formed where so many worlds collide, where so many opposites attract – delicacy and devastation, beauty and beat, ambience and noise, sonic light and musical darkness. The tension and restlessness of these dynamic forces give this rising Canadian artist such a great sound.
The scope and scale of her sound is perhaps revealed by playing ‘Can’t Explain’ and ‘Life,’ which follows it, back to back. If the former feels like a hazy, harmonious soundscape shot through with salvos of alt-rock energy, building a musical landscape of lulls and crescendos, what follows is the sound of what happens when she lets those ambient interludes control the mix. Both are fantastic; both merge mood and melody; both sound like perfect sonic bedfellows, even when they create very different soundscapes.
And as if to underline the point, ‘Dark Star’ feels so fragile and ephemeral that you worry it would disappear altogether if you stopped concentrating. The title track is, at times, both growling and graceful; ‘Dreams’ runs the gamut of sonics from the seductive to the scintillating, and ‘We Are All Stars’ ends on a sound that is more traditionally tied to dream-pop past, a future-nostalgic echo to complete the sonic circle.
She is also so apt at voice-as-instrument communication that often these tales of love and loss and longing and life and grief and self-discovery arrive through evoked feeling as much as direct lyrical displays, which only adds to the mystic.
What a glorious album; a lucid dream, a magical soundscape and the sound of emotions and experiences turned into magical music.
