Brigid Mae Power – Brigid Mae Power (2016)

320 kbps | 101 MB | UL | OB | TB | DF

Like This Mortal Coil, Marissa Nadler, and White Chalk-era PJ Harvey, Power is adept at grounding what could otherwise be quite gossamer music. Sometimes she uses pace and volume, as on opener “It’s Clearing Now,” which spends almost eight minutes creeping in like a storm over the horizon, until it becomes overwhelming and transcendent. “Oh, many, many times to force happiness, I have tried/But I had to be patient in waiting for its movement,” she sings meditatively, while her loosely strummed guitar beckons a whirl of strings. She shades her songs with soured highs and unsettling depths, like the low bass note on “Is It My Low or Yours” and the blast of static that cuts through “Watching the Horses.”

Power is an equally nuanced vocalist. Her voice is agile and exhilarating, conveying all her nervous optimism and frank exhaustion, whether singing monastic drones (“Let Me Hold You Through This”), forlorn ballads (“Is It My Low or Yours”), or Carpenters-indebted melodies. She never comes close to elucidating what it is she escaped, but the aftermath leaves little doubt as to how serious it was. She reveals her coping mechanisms on “I Left Myself for a While,” but rediscovers everything she had locked deep in some internal safe on “Watching the Horses.” Backed by dreamy, subtly cinematic strings, she sings, “I thought I had completely forgotten/But it was in body’s memory/I release it now/I am free.”