Tara Jane O誰eil
K Records
This is the fifth album from Tara Jane O’Neil, or TJO as she’s often known, and her first attempt at pop. She describes her earlier records as ‘cloud music’, which is a pretty good summary of the experimental, meandering offerings that have established O’Neil as an unusually talented solo artist. A Ways Away, though, is tighter than her previous efforts, with each track sufficiently succinct to satisfy the attention span of the popular audience.
The mood created by this album is at once understated and magical. A Ways Away enchants from the very first track, Dig In, in which O’Neil’s quiet, ethereal vocals combine with the soft, steady jangle of a tambourine to conjure fairytale images of remote woodlands inhabited by tiny warbling sprites. If O’Neil’s voice was a dessert, it would be lemon cheesecake; bittersweet, with the impression of being nourishing, and ever so delicious.
And then there is the smooth, rich, ringing guitar sound. It has the pleasant warmth of a bath in winter that soothes but doesn’t scald; it thrums in the background, rising and falling, lingering in one place and then another. Some of the songs sound like dreamscapes, as in the more abstract lyrics and ambient tempo of Beast, Go Along, but other tracks lift the listener as if from sleep to the clarity of misery. Howl has the yearning melodies and tragic folksy narrative of Sarah MacLachlan’s Full of Grace, and ever so gently pierces the eardrum with the kind of comforting melancholy that makes you want to hug yourself.
Drifting between lonely-vulnerable and quietly confident, and wistful throughout the record, O’Neil has penned a compelling set of tunes to contemplate your most recent personal tragedy by. Close your windows and shut your bedroom door, light some candles and turn this up loud. Prepare to tingle with strangely happy sorrow. Eleanor Rose
A Ways Away is out on K Records, 20th July.
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