Emanating from a period of dark depression during lockdown 2020, the Radiohead guitarist’s solo album is a meditative, soothing, catharsis piece, beautiful uplifting at times, found through experimental rock, jazz, drone, psychedelia, and of course, a flavour his career band. Variously inspired by discussions about the 432 Hz frequency with Shabaka Hutchings, a trip to Estonia to bond with composer Tõnu Kõrvits over the great Arvo Pärt, leading to Kõrvits arranged the strings on the title track played by Estonia’s Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, and Brazil, where O’Brien first saw the iridescent butterfly after which the album takes its title, it is an album of self-help, started by locking himself in a room with his guitar and finding out what sounds helped. The title track is the absolute highlight, a gorgeous, soaring swirl of strings and dynamic arrangement. Opener Incantations unfurls with a hypnotic psych-folk, a rhythmic simple string riff that seems to be a mathematic formula for healing, O’Brien’s gentle voice inspired by the rustle of leaves in the Welsh countryside, and decorated with a wonderful latticework of guitars played by Dave Okumu. The other highlight is Teachers, a superb groove of polyrhythmic jazz and trip-hop, with particular strength in the rhythm section of Yves Fernandez and Dan See. The tone and mood is anxious, restless but also cathartic, Okumu’s gnarled guitar another key element. Of the second half of album’s seven tracks, the second half is slower, more meditative, with Solfeggio a drone piece capturing the moment when the horizon blurs as day morphs into night, and closer Obrigado is a musical meditative prayer of gratitude over struggle and salvation. A candid release of dark serenity that finds the light. Out on Transgressive Records.
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