Available on: Dead Oceans LP
Back in 2011, with the release of The Magic Place, not a few column inches were expended trying to explain why Julianna Barwick was not “the new Enya”, as the NYT had previously suggested. Many people seemed to feel that, in order to justify the value of Barwick’s music, they first had to distance it from that most toxic of tags, ‘New Age’. Which seems like an odd viewpoint given the pluralist, post-canonical taste-o-sphere we inhabit these days – one where the musical whipping boys of yesteryear are routinely revived as cult favourites. In 2013, there is plenty of music around that is emotionally monochrome and pleasingly so; more still that is pretty much entirely surface, but gorgeous surface nonetheless.
Barwick’s music is both of those things. Across two albums to date the Brooklyn-based musician has recorded, looped and layered her own voice to create swatches of soothing lyric-less polyphony. It’s a highly focussed and distinctive sonic world, evoking the pure vaulted ceilings of protestant cathedrals but tapping more directly into a secular lineage taking in Brian Eno, Meredith Monk and The Cocteau Twins. For her third LP, Barwick has enlisted the help of Iceland-based producer Alex Somers, a longtime affiliate of Sigur Ros – whose brand of blissful post-rock has, via TV sync favourite ‘Hoppipola’, come about as close as any to being the modern day incarnation of new age. Nepenthe was recorded with Somers in Reykjavik, and, in contrast to Barwick’s former solitary method, features a raft of collaborators – including choirs, guitars and Sigur Ros-affiliated string group Amiina.
As you might expect, then, there is a newly panoramic quality to this album that makes comparisons with Sigur Ros pretty tempting. Often these tracks stride purposefully towards climax rather than drifting in Barwick’s usual hallowed stasis. ‘The Harbinger’ and ‘Forever’ both take a turn for the redemptive that, if not exactly cheesy, does feel a little hackneyed; ‘Pyrrhic’ pivots between darkness and light in an almost cinematic fashion. Sometimes it feels like Barwick is working with broader brushstrokes than before; certainly she seems to be making bolder gestures.
Elsewhere, familiar ideas are developed in subtler ways. The usual roving celestial choirs are a common feature, but they often display a newfound depth and detail. In ‘Look Into Your Own Mind’ they are augmented by a dense thicket of strings, to lovely effect; ‘Labyrinthine’ sees Barwick’s multi-tracked voice gradually joined by other singers, as if her solitary world is slowly opening its borders to the outside. Perhaps the most rewarding moments come when Barwick deploys her new resources to create something she simply couldn’t have before – as in closer ‘Waving To You’, which sounds like one of her vocal numbers re-arranged for tremulous winds, or strings, or some subtle combination of the two.
The only full-on concession to pop form is the anthemic ‘One Half’, which contains probably the most overt melodic hook Barwick has ever committed to record. The effect is a little schmaltzy, thought its directness will doubtless win over new fans. Nepenthe is more ambitious than its predecessors, more varied in style and execution and sonically richer. It’s also, perhaps, harder to hear Barwick in there, among the full-bodied arrangements and pristine production.
