I have waxed lyrical about Nathaniel Paul’s gorgeous and graceful music many times before on this platform, so it was fantastic to read that The Bergamot is actually him as one half of a duo with his wife, Jillian Speece.
Now, I have to admit to being out of the loop, only having heard Paul’s solo music and being unaware of the rich and much-storied history of The Bergamot, but I’m with the program now, so better late than never.
“Tides” is a delicate and lush piano ballad, the bridge between Paul’s often seductively simple songs (and as we all know, getting a song to sound simple is the most complex thing in the world) and The Bergamot’s more wide-screen and cinematic soundscapes. Here we find ourselves in a place of folktronic finesse, where analog instrumentation is slowly picked up and deftly spun around the digital dancefloor. But the real story is the vocals, a gorgeous array that you rarely find done this well outside people this closely connected, spouses and siblings and the like.
And as the song picks up some pace, it never loses its poise; similarly, the increasing sonic weight never manages to tether the song too much in the mundane world, for how could our world ever hope to claim such beautiful music?
As gorgeous as Nathaniel Paul’s music has been when I have found it in the review pile, I feel as if that was akin to me reading a rich and rewarding book and assuming that I was one of a rare few to find it, only to discover that there is a whole back catalog that people have been raving about for years.
It looks like I have some catching up to do! And I’m really looking forward to it.
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