EXACTLY half of Denver’s percussive synth outfit School Dance, Allison Lorenzen has refined the art of bringing vocal colour and life to stripped back tunes; an aesthetic we can now experience in full as she steps into a more analogue world for her debut outing under her own name, in which project she’s enlisted Midwife, aka guitarist Madeline Johnston, to bring beautiful guitar tonality.
Allison’s releasing that first single today, “VALE”. Take a listen below; Allison vocals are cool, dulcet, enchanting and chanting; detached and folksy, as if maybe Mimi Parker had relocated to the forests of the Midwest; an atmosphere redoubled with the warm swathe of guitar fuzz which wraps her as she intones that doomy hook: “I’m like a vale in the night”.
A vale, of course, has form as a trope for the darker side of life beyond its literal geographical meaning; the vale of tears, where the winter light withdraws fast – if it ever reaches the valley floor at all.
If we needed a guide or a siren, Allison looks to be adept; the way her voice and those guitars melt and leak with dun coloration. Let’s see what else she has in store as 2021 slowly creaks towards longer days.
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