BRENDA XU - Overflow

Brenda Xu paints her third full-length, “Overflow”, as a kind of emotional journey, a path aimed at capturing the strength and hidden hope behind daily stress and the build-up of negativity that can erode our judgment and self-control. There's no way of knowing to what extent what informs the seven tracks lyrically on the Sino-American singer-songwriter's new record draws on personal experience, but there's no doubting the care with which the songstress navigates a notoriously slippery terrain, where it takes very little to slip into either banality or self-indulgent sentimentality. Over a scant half hour, Xu's measured folk wraps the songs' emotional nuances in a shifting, respectful embrace, a gentle grip that underscores the diversity and richness of the writer's craft, which has clearly sharpened with each successive release.

Built on an expressive core that hasn't undergone substantial changes (the pronounced guitar lines, well placed within the rhythmic context; the precise, no-frills vocal performances), the musician's songwriting nonetheless pushes even further past the limits of the voice-guitar formula, backing itself on nearly every track with a rich instrumental apparatus that drapes the songs in an elegant chamber-music veil. Even more than on the seasonal cycle captured on “For The Winter”, the sonic dressing here proves functional in highlighting the variability and personality of Brenda Xu's writing, which on its own terms coordinates every single shift in the arrangements through a keen arsenal of compositional solutions.

“Flying” best exemplifies the concept, a two-part atmospheric ballad whose sung first half gives way in the second to an irrepressible instrumental climax, marked by the emergence of trombone flourishes and a splendid structure steeped in rock suggestion.

Elsewhere the focus shifts more toward the writer's limpid performances, capable of sketching out her narrative world without wasting a single note, yet with a descriptive richness that the one-minute a cappella of “Overflow” already introduces to perfection. “I Can Visit You”, with its intriguing picking as accompaniment, frames Xu's voice at the peak of its lyricism, in a melody that manages to combine both abandon and enchantment, but the same communicative power is found amid the harmonies of “Officer”, where the vocal weaves into the folds of a stricter, yet no less captivating, chamber-folk.

Where “Lovely Storm” then plays with greater structural linearity, in an emotional chiaroscuro that serves as a worthy mouthpiece for the album's lyrical concept, “Just For Us” pushes the songwriter's art to its most extreme atmospheric conclusions, bringing out the more ambient qualities of a versatile, beguiling musical language.

With her artistic personality now fully bloomed and her sonic aesthetic refined in every respect, Brenda Xu is well on her way toward consecration. “Overflow” is her excellent calling card.

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27/04/2017