I remember being beguiled by “Dream River,” my first encounter with Natalie Bouloudis, I remember thinking that this was music from a very rare place, one that few music makers ever find their way to, a place that we only know because of the musical portals created by the likes of P J Harvey or Nick Cave.
“Spinning Planet,” her latest single, certainly orbits that same location, but it is another, less-well-known, rising star that is, in my mind at least, conjured here: Elea Calvet. There is something in the same gothic-folk textures, the same blend of etherality and hurt, the same shimmering, chamber-pop ornateness, the same primal earthiness, the same beguiling attraction.
“Spinning Planet” is a slightly and wilfully fractured affair, a platform of ebbing and flowing of sonics that don’t quite meet up, so that there is room for additional atmospheres and anticipations rise through the spaces between one scratchy guitar line and another shimmering sound wash, one ominous vibe and another shard of music. This is music as plate tectonics, always on the move, not thoroughly predictable, subtle and slightly dangerous.
But her compelling voice and the occasional wandering violin hold everything together perfectly, the tasteful icing on a very ornate cake. And it is such balancing acts, such fine lines walked between the raw and the refined, the broken and the beautiful, the grand and the graceful, the worldly and ethereal, which makes “Spinning Planet” such a heartaching, gorgeous, not to mention, oddly contagious affair.
Bandcamp
Facebook
Twitter
Soundcloud
Bandcamp
