Star Eaters Delight

Album review

Singer/songwriter Lael Neale's 2021 album Acquainted with Night departed from the somewhat forgettable studio sound of her earlier work in favor of home recording, imperfect performances, and spare arrangements consisting mostly of voice and Omnichord, a toy-like synth instrument with a built-in rhythm box. While the lo-fi production was markedly rougher, something about the minimal composition and constant bed of tape hiss only pushed the character of Neale's songs to the forefront. Star Eaters Delight continues the raw production of Acquainted with Night and expands on its dream-like sound by further fleshing out the arrangements and playing with the delivery. Each of the eight songs on Star Eaters Delight takes a slightly different approach, beginning with the anxious drum machine and "bap badda dum" chanting of "I Am the River." Neale's Omnichord switches between two droning chords as frequent collaborator/producer Guy Blakeslee adds twitchy guitar leads, amounting to a jumpy opening track lost somewhere between Suicide's most blissed-out moments and the most demented girl group that never was. "Must Be Tears" is more subdued, with synthetic Mellotron strings and gentle melodies evoking the same soft melancholy Nico captured on Chelsea Girl. "No Holds Barred" is another minimal standout. Though the song is just guitar and reverb-heavy vocals, its melodies and composition are so precise that it's immediately captivating, feeling like a lost demo from Linda Ronstadt's Stone Ponies era, Jackie DeShannon, or any number of stars from the phase of AM pop that bridged the late '60s and early '70s. Elsewhere, the lengthy centerpiece "In Verona" builds slowly from piano passages to textural washes of guitar and field recordings. The eight-minute song sounds like an audience tape of Lana Del Rey jamming with Spacemen 3, a combination that looks questionable on paper but manifests in a best-of-both-worlds way here. Star Eaters Delight is less of a uniform statement than Acquainted with Night was, but this collection of versatile songs acts as a tour of different neighborhoods in the beautifully smeary nocturnal dream world Neale began building on her last album.

© Fred Thomas /TiVo