We often associate intimacy in music with finger-picked acoustic guitars and hushed vocals or small chamber ensembles. But on sentiment, the latest of more than two dozen albums and EPs polymathic producer, composer, and performer claire rousay has released since 2019, she lets us into her life - or a carefully crafted version of it - through the use of field recordings and lyrics that seem straight out of her notes app. This kind of intimacy feels very much of our time - and sentiment would play well with Sugar Vendil’s Live Love Work Play, which I featured last month.
When I included everything perfect is already here in the Best Of 2022: Electronic, I noted:
Rousay is prolific enough that it almost seems as if the steady flow of albums and EPs may be acting as some sort of diary for her. There certainly is a lived-in quality to the two 15-minute pieces that make up this album, which not so much creates an environment but comes from one…like entering a sprawling apartment filled with musicians, but as pure consciousness, allowing you to hear all sound as music and all music as sound, without making any noises of your own…Rousay maps out a place of memories you never had or haven't had yet. Captivating, witty, and utterly unique.
Rousay even clues us into her methods on the opening song, 4pm, which has the voice of Theodor Cale Schafer state at one point:
i am writing this on my iPhone,
and can already tell that this text will either end up sounding like
a suicide note or like, some pathetic attempt at “being real”.it is neither though. the closest thing i can think of to compare this text to is a letter to the universe,
begging for the aching to let up, the crying to slow, and my ability to function to return.
While that sounds like I’m putting you in the path of an 18-wheeler overloaded with overshares, there is balance here, with succor arriving on the wings of luminescent ambient tracks like sycamore skylight, which features twittering birds and urban sounds wrapped in a warm bath of distorted keyboards. It sounds like nothing more than belonging.
If what you’ve read and heard so far intrigues you, I urge you to listen to all of sentiment, which is as well-sequenced as an album as the sounds she assembles in her tracks, with off-beat pop enjambed with sound collages and other forms of assemblage.
This strong, accessible, and emotional follow-up to everything perfect is already here further establishes rousay as an important artist for our time.
From the archives:
A Song For Friday: Sugar Vendil
Best of 2022: Electronic
Note: the graphic above is based on photography by Zoe Donahoe and Adam Sputh.
Thx! This was my morning wake up soundtrack!