Lael Neale
Star Eaters Delight

From a small Virginia farm to Los Angeles. And, conversely, return. Growing up, in the middle, however, in Ireland: pasture fields above high cliffs on the ocean.

The Omnichord is the key. An electric autoharp, synthesized, unusually connectable to the zither, the psaltery, the dulcimer. This is how the singer-songwriter conceives her eight pieces. Then a splenetic depression, from which she moves and emerges. Lo-fi, from which she derives, rendering great dignity. The rejection of all recording software as the dawn of the album. No screens, only tapes, in harmony with the confirmed producer, arranger, guitarist Guy Blakeslee. Thus, she perfects her dreamlike style, a rain and air robustness, pushed from indie folk towards psychedelic, country, and alt-rock fields.

Star Eaters Delight, Lael Neale's second work for Sub Pop, is from April 2023. It mixes unripeness and maturity together. Finally, it frees an irascible and fascinating naiad, with a sharp but soft voice. Not caressing but visceral. A raging river of femininity described with few but sharp, minimal means, and great intensity, as a precise fruit of inaccessible seductiveness.

A nostalgic, suffering lyricism, in search of certainties that correspond to equally unquenchable turmoils. The album channels itself on antinomies (country-city, nature-technology, love-solitude, depth-superficiality) and seeks an escape route, at least in freedom from conformism.

The Omnichord launches into a "garage punk" solo over its drum machine and distorted bass in the faster tracks. In the ballads, the piano fills the often dreamy and grave atmosphere, contrasted with synthesizers and ambient noises; or the muffled acoustic guitar is opposed to the saturated electric one; or, alternatively, the Mellotron lines overwhelm the amplified acoustics. Always sparingly emerge '60s folk-pop airs and emaciated gospel, dream pop distances, and dark wave sentimentality; but everything is misted and laid on the transparent glass of a humid and silky personal language. Behind that glass are these seemingly poor sounds; on the surface, impossible not to feel it, Lael's inner self is like effigied. And Lael throws her voice open in sketches, reverberations, and small perimeters:

«It is spring / And all I do is cry» (“Must Be Tears”);

«I am the river, I drag men down / … / I have my sadness and this is sacred / …/ I swear allegiance to the tree and the meadow» (“I Am The River”);

«As blood descended from your prayer lips / You met it /… / Don't cast stones» (“In Verona”);

«It's exactly noon / The bells of St. Ives are ringing / The streets are of stone and of thoughts of you / Reach me / Faster than a medicine» (“Faster Than The Medicine”).

A cohesive picture is at the window, where you find both indefiniteness and consistency, depth and essentiality. Revealing and holding a beauty as delicate as it is edgy. And there's a rigor in all this, which cannot be entirely spoken, coinciding warmth and detachment.