CIRCUIT DES YEUX - Halo On The Inside

For her eighth outing, American musician Haley Fohr changes skin once again. Not content with having brilliantly captured the fears and pain of the post-pandemic era on the album “-io”, she returns to the stage with the Circuit Des Yeux project and an album that's even darker and more stentorian.

“Halo On The Inside” completes the transmutation from art-pop artist to new goth muse, dragging in its wake a carpet of synthwave and industrial sounds that the artist assembled within the walls of a basement with the conceptual support of Andrew Broder (known for his collaborations with Bon Iver and Lambchop).

“Halo On The Inside” is an album even more intoxicating than its predecessor “-io”, often corroded by an unprecedented physicality that gives rise to tracks rich in electronic reverb, poised between Depeche Mode and Japan (“Megaloner”), as well as shaken by industrial shivers that make the contrast with her contralto vocals even more enigmatic and jarring (“Canopy Of Eden”).

To the surrealism of her latest works, the artist alternates a more adventurous drive, not without measured dips in tone, which gradually open the door to an almost theatrical dramaturgy, where the poetics of Antony & The Johnsons surface, contaminated with metal-core scratches (“Sketeton Key”).

Immersed in the depths of dark goth liturgies, the project reveals ripples where a melancholic claustrophobia lurks (“Cosmic Joke”), not immune to sonic hybridizations that, in blending the sacred and the profane, don't fully convince (“Cathexis”). The emphasis of the single that preceded the album's release, “God Dick” (not included here), is ultimately the connecting point between “-io” and “Halo On The Inside”, but the transition isn't painless, and against an “Anthem Of Me” that digs into murky heavy sonorities stands a funky mockery that dusts off a certain 80s electronic sound (“Truth”).

Bold and fearless, the American artist's new project is at times uncertain. Even the pop haughtiness of “Organ Bed” and the fluid echoes of “It Takes My Pain Away”, placed at the back of a multifaceted work, fail to resolve the doubts scattered with admirable fervor and audacity throughout the rest of the album.

However deep and lived-in it may be, Circuit Des Yeux's return offers, on one hand, some of Haley Fohr's finest vocal performances, more seductive than ever before, and on the other hand remains overall suspended between ecstasy and irresolution, leaving the definitive consecration of this intriguing artistic evolution to the next record.

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26/03/2025