Dislocatia by Liam Singer
LABEL: Hidden Shoal Recordings
Nowadays, classically influenced singer-songwriters are no longer a rare commodity, even when they can play the harpsichord. In these musically undefined times, any given artist’s influences hardly hold any merit on their own. Which is why it’s not Liam Singer’s diverse musical pallet alone makes this album worth listening to, many times over; it’s the unique and beautiful picture he chooses to paint with it.
“It is that balance between drifting away and musical purposefulness that drives the album and gives it a uniquely lofty, pelagic atmosphere.”
“Dislocatia” is, by definition, not about a location, a specific mood, but the exact opposite. Setting the tone for forty minutes of eternal searching and never-quite-feeling-at-home, it opens with a deceptive instrumental statement; what starts off as a simple Beethovenesque prelude soon turns into an entirely unexpected mélange, fusing an operatic Soprano with several more keyboard instruments, drifting away to nowhere in particular—but sticking together, in a semi-organized form, like a flock of birds in the wind.
It is that balance between drifting away and musical purposefulness that drives the album and gives it a uniquely lofty, pelagic atmosphere. “The Brief Encounter” is a quirky fairytale which juxtaposes a straightforward narrative with an ambitious, cinematic musical landscape; “so we flew above the sea”, sings Singer, and you’re up there with him, feeling the wind in your hair. The prosody offered by the orchestration is nothing short of staggering; the piano-harpsichord arpeggios and lyrical violins feel like the very musical embodiment of flying.
But while that sense of musical cohesion is prevalent almost in every song, it doesn’t imply a unified sound throughout the entire album. About a quarter of the songs are instrumentals, so whenever you hear a song for the first time, you’re not entirely sure what exactly is going to happen. None of the songs are predictable: “Leave the World To Those Who Care” evolves into a Celtic chant, while “Dead Old Friend”, which starts as a rhythmic exercise in impressionism, soon turns into a jig, a Danse Macabre, somewhere between the tavern and the graveyard.
“Dislocatia feels oddly familiar, like walking into an unknown house and finding a welcoming, half-forgotten face.”
Some songs feature more traditional treatments; “Winter Weeds” is a piano-accompanied, fugal duet between Singer and fellow Boxharp member Wendy Allen (whose voice gracefully endows much of the album with its light-filled, ethereal quality). But even when the instrumental pallet is purposefully limited, the painting is nevertheless imaginative; as the male and female vocal lines intertwine, chasing each other's tails and completing each other’s musical phrases (while representing emotional polar opposites), it’s clear that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
As the case tends to be with adventurous, ambitious and exploratory music, there are a few moments in the album where the listener may lose his or her bearings, where the feeling of dislocation can be a bit overbearing. “Morton Feldman Holding Notes for Eternity” feels like an interlude from a musical, the story of which you don’t know and aren’t invested in. But the vast majority of the songs are evocative, appealing, and surprisingly approachable at first listening; while not pertaining to any particular place or time, Dislocatia feels oddly familiar, like walking into an unknown house and finding a welcoming, half-forgotten face.
REVIEWED BY MICHAEL HAZANI
MICHAEL’S FAVORITE TRACKS: “The Brief Encounter” • “Winter Weeds” • “Dead Old Friend”
FREE MP3: “Winter Weeds” (right-click & save)
