A Private Road

Album review

Laura Groves' first EP since 2015 and third overall is also her debut for Bella Union, a boost in exposure following a run with Bullion's smaller Deek label. The atmospheric art-pop she has been perfecting since her folk phase as Blue Roses continues its incremental progression here. It's at once fresh and seemingly dislocated, as if someone made an unreasonable open call to have the ballads on Roxy Music's Avalon and Judie Tzuke's Ritmo remixed and refurbished, stripped of all excess, only to have Groves turn down the challenge and offer these immaculate confections as consolation. Whereas Groves is typically keen to collaborate -- her previous EPs were made with the likes of Bullion, Fabiana Palladino, and Ben Reed, and she has played numerous supporting and featured roles herself -- this was made primarily in solitude. Perhaps that explains why this sounds even more out of time and isolated than Thinking About Thinking and Committed Language. In most of the songs, Groves seems to be making sense of a situation in flux, emotionally and physically adrift, further articulated with lilting piano motifs, aching background harmonies, and some spectral synthesizer shading. The exception is the opening "Infinite Wisdom," a subtle wonder. Its more affirmative phrasings and sense of serene release would have made for an appropriate finale.
© Andy Kellman /TiVo