If dream-pop is a very specific genre, one woven of shimmering sonics and neo-psychedelic vibes, and dreamy pop is more an approach towards more mainstream pop music where atmosphere and haze are promoted above more obvious groove and contagion, Zoë Zohar’s latest release, ‘Spaceship414’, sits between the two. Part blissed-out commercial pop, part dream-pop proper.
Not that it matters how you get there; what matters are the results. And the results are fantastic. Initially driven by chiming guitars and a gently bubbling bass, her warm, intimate voice holds the focus. And lyrically, she describes something that we can all relate to: those moments when you just aren’t present, when you might be physically right next to someone but emotionally, through no fault of your own, miles away. That contradiction: longing for physical connection while being subject to darker, more melancholic and even destructive forces.
As the song heads for home, that tension caused by these two opposites at work plays out through the rise of musical textures, and the increase of sonic weight: guitars build, pressure closes in, electronic tides ebb and flow and swell, and it all becomes a fantastic metaphor for the constant mental buffeting caused by such a dichotomy.
And all that in two minutes! It’s amazing what music can do, how it can set the scene, lay out scenarios, and talk to us emotionally as well as literally when it is wielded by the right pair of hands. Zoë Zohar is indeed the right pair of hands.
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