Gently profound, and full of wondrous, mesmeric, slow, delicate experimental songs, this simple title has a powerful resonance – it is the Chicago artist’s first vocal album since 2018’s There’s Always Glimmer (there have been two instrumental LPs since), having suffered and recovered from a severe vocal injury, she returns with a delicate, candid, whispery but hauntingly beautiful delivery. “Everything unsaid, it sinks in / For a little too long”, she sings in a haunting way on the opener lead single Everyone Around Me Dancing, accompanied by piano a gentle beat, and woodwind sounds, describing how her body keeps her from communal joy, but shut of off, giving her a new insight, and“closer to the ground, the planet”. Through Cellular Reverse, then the gentle psychedelic distortions of Alive Inside (“And all the songs I could have sung / I chose to fight / And yeah, I roll with it”), and beyond with Moon Not Mine and more, this album is a slowly dawning depiction of someone re-discovery their identity, like nature slowly waking into spring. Good Friend is another highlight, a gently upbeat, optimistic number: “A flash of light from a message you send / And I want to be a good friend, so I'm writing a song for you.” Phenomenon and Ambient For Ichiko are particularly beautiful numbers, the latter an instrumental rippling with textured sounds, acoustic guitars and synth layering, haunting and lovely, ending in half-vocalisations to express her journey back to words. Margaret’s combinations of sounds are restrained but unusual. Even with the vocal distortions on final track E-Motion, which then swells to a glorious sonic conclusion, it’s a beautifully subtle LP, applying the lessons of speechlessness and the alternative ways humans communicate without conventionally communicating. All artists need to find their voice, but in this case Margaret’s has been re-found with gently resonant and profound, unusual potency. Out on Jagjaguwar.
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