SIMONE WHITE - Silver Silver

Long sandy stretches, three figures painting a portrait of mysterious imperturbability, set against Hawaii's clouded sky. The splendid photograph that introduces "Silver Silver", the fourth record by Simone White, one of the most sensitive voices in American songwriting, lives in the memories of childhood; she releases a new work three years on from the exquisite folk-inflected songbook titled "Yakiimo".

Since then the singer-songwriter has hardly been sitting idle: a long world tour, contacts with musicians from very different backgrounds (not least Andrew Bird, for whom she opened a few dates), and, why not, even licensing some of her songs for advertisements, have turned her into a genuine cult figure, a paradigm of refinement applied to the song form.

And yet, even though female-fronted folk has seen exponential growth and spread in recent years, the name of the lovely Hawaiian has never achieved the recognition of many of her peers, despite a musical approach that is anything but difficult or inaccessible. And while plenty of other young hopefuls keep discovering the charm of tradition (the debuts of Mirel Wagner and Hannah Cohen in recent months), White partly steps outside this framework, which had clearly become too narrow for her, letting her inspiration turn toward other shores and absorb their alluring aromas.

Despite this, White doesn't forget the delicate features that have shaped her musical path so far. In what turns out to be, to all effects, her most intimate and personal work, like a seamstress she stitches together, with caressing expressiveness, intense voice-and-guitar vignettes that hold their own against some of the finest moments in her catalogue (the phenomenal closing fragment "Every Little Now And Then", the elegiac purity of "Never Be That Tough").

The essential core of the songwriter's art thus remains more or less unchanged; however, it has to reckon with the introduction of a whole host of elements and solutions that alter its shape, scrambling its form and emotional impact. The change in collaborators (production duties pass from members of the veteran Lambchop to members of a much more obscure indie-pop band, the Los Angeles-based Fol Chen) must have played a key role in reshaping the artist's sonic coordinates, which she herself takes on with surprising ease.

The slender starting template embraces, without any hesitation, dense electronic textures, suavely conjures smooth ambient glimmers, and essentially lets itself drift into an undefined place where minimal timbres coexist with gentle acoustic effusions. And the combination works remarkably well: the caressing vocal, veiled in auto-tune, moves softly over the seraphic flow of "Flowers In May", built around an intriguing folktronic bed.

What in other circumstances would have been a dazzling exercise in jazz-pop becomes, in "Big Dreams And The Headlines", a small masterpiece of sonic manipulation, in which fragments of atmospheric minimalism intersect with the overwhelming openings of the chorus, shaped by the pulse of the drums.

However, this isn't merely an album of songs: confirming that behind this record, beyond the big ideas, lies a bold redefinition of her own artistic imagination, Simone shows no hesitation in devising, with unusual flair, sonic frameworks that border on the avant-garde, offering hints of concrete evolutions to come later in her career. So it is that, after the delightful glitch-folk of "What The Devil Brings" (which hints at imagined urban backdrops), we run into the sprightly vocal reverbs of "Long moon", where the ghost of the Dirty Projectors toys around amid a sea of effects big and small. Two other brief interludes, "Frogs" and "Bonnie Brae", ferry a burning inventiveness toward the shores of electroacoustics, conjuring a murky sunrise over unsettling marshland vistas in the first, and evoking faint ambient backdrops in the second.

As a summation of a spectacular manifesto of intent, the enchanted tribalism of "In The Water City Ends" (accompanied by a charming animated video) in memory of the recent Fukushima disaster, but even more so, the priceless seven minutes of the title-track, unfolding over gripping chromatic ups and downs with a contribution from the aforementioned Bird, elevate an already dense and highly worthwhile work, through which the artist loads the concept of "elegance" with new meaning. Quietly, as has always been the case in the White household, a silver graced with the sheen of gold.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

18/05/2012