Vera Sola - Peacemaker - Import CD

Credits:

Vera Sola

Description:

On her second album, Vera Solas Danielle Aykroyd makes it clear where shes coming from; its when shes coming from that feels like an enticing mystery. She began blending genres and eras on 2018s Shades, reviving heartbroken girl-group pop from the 1960s on one song and crooning a seemingly ancient parable on the next. As she contemplates the past and how we reckon with it on Peacemaker, Vera Sola reimagines the traditions of folk, country, and vocal pop even more skillfully. This is due partly to the albums striking instrumentation and arrangements. Instead of recording on her own, as she did with Shades, this time she enlisted co-producer Kenneth Pattengale and over a dozen supporting musicians. Leading a bigger creative team, Vera Solas vision feels all the more singular on Peacemaker. Lavish strings shift from fluttering to queasy as betrayal curdles into delusion on "Desire Path," a Brenda Lee song from an alternate dimension. This slightly unhinged elegance continues on the Latin-tinged noir of "Get Wise" and "Is That You?," a seance of a song that drifts by on spectral pedal steel. Peacemaker also showcases the firepower of Vera Solas music, channeling the energy of her live shows in "The Line"s frenzied surf and post-punk hybrid and "Blood Bond"s mid-song transformation from a lament to a blazing anthem ignited by her formidable vibrato. Her voice and lyrics more than hold their own against the albums dramatic sonics on songs such as "Im Lying," where her rippling guitar and whispered untruths are layered with filmic tension and pacing, or the swirling prologue "Bad Idea," where she envisions the consequences of societys willingness to "take tomorrow out on loan" as a raging forest fire. Vera Solas blurring of past and present sounds especially apt to the early 2020s here, but more often, Peacemakers dreamlike world has a timeless appeal that fans of Calexico, Timber Timbre, and Marissa Nadler will love. ~ Heather Phares

Tracklisting:

1.Bad Idea
2.The Line
3.I'm Lying
4.Get Wise
5.Desire Path
6.Waiting
7.Bird House
8.Hands
9.Is That You ?
10.Blood Bond
11.Instrument of War