The Difficult Sixth or Seventh Album
I think Haley Fohr released a classic this year, and while I was far from alone in my admiration, I was surprised not to see it turn up in even more “end of year” lists.
But then I thought about the type of album it represents in her career. Haley has been making records since 2008, so this is of course far from a striking debut. Nor is it an artist finding-their-voice album; a putting-it-all together album; a breakout-to-larger-public album; a controversial jump-to-major-with-champions-and-detractors album; a why-fool-with-what-works album; a back-to-basics album; a going-electronic album; an interesting-and/or-famous-collaborators album; or even a reprise-of-striking-debut-but-now-with-experience album.
Instead, it’s Haley’s ambitious sixth or seventh album, depending how you count them.
And maybe that’s a category we don’t make enough room for…?
“Mid-career” is such a dreary term – it’s human resources vocabulary for a life led in art. Haley challenges herself and her listeners with each and every release. What more could you ask, than she do more of what she does?
Yet that would sometimes seem to be the last thing we ask of artists, not least as music writers. For one, it’s hard to pitch an ambitious sixth or seventh album (depending how you count them) - they are too often dismissed for what they are not.
What it is:
-io starts with Sgt Pepper-y grandeur, an orchestral glissando but without the final piano chord that would have ended the album before it began. Instead, it launches into a groove – a groove on a string ensemble. You hear that these are real strings, played by multiple hands, and that this must therefore be scored. And yet the groove is loose, blossoming like a classic rock song as it speeds into an exciting chorus followed by a dramatic break, only to fall effortlessly back into the groove. Meanwhile Haley is singing, also in classic rock style, about goodbyes. It’s a thrilling opening, in full command of the “band” assembled for this record.
The album continues to toy with rock in this manner, as it pursues its own take on art song. Haley dips in and out of familiar song structures, but just as readily breaks them open. Sometimes we get the return of a chorus we crave, but that doesn’t mean it leads back to the verse. Or we get a repeat of the verse, which isn’t necessarily followed by a chorus. And often it’s the strings that step in to take us away from these expectations.
The heaviest track on side A, “Sculpting the Exodus,” seems to put words to this device: “The signal goes on repeating,” Haley sings, while the orchestration actually builds away from straight repetition, until she too finally leaves words behind and vocalizes in that uniquely hair-raising way she has developed over years of performance. Rather than the circular repetition of ambient or trance, this is more like wheels on a runway, accelerating toward take off.
On Side B, the album picks up that eccentric speed. “Argument” is as fully realized and as spookily unexpected as late Scott Walker. It is operatic in its address – the signal here doesn’t repeat at all, but is strictly linear. And given the apocalyptic imagery of the lyric, the one-way trajectory makes perfect sense. With multiple shifts in tone and tone color, these five minutes feel like a précis of the complete record. If it were a book, this would be its summary “argument.”
“Stranger,” the penultimate track, is an older tune from Haley’s repertoire delivered as piano ballad - the only arrangement on the album without drums. It sounds to me the way I imagine Adele must sound to others: intimate yet public, meditative yet declarative, prettily melodic yet emotionally unsettling. There’s even room for bravura vocalization at the end. If only this were the song the next generation started bringing to auditions!
The album closes with a return to its initial, tantalizing play with classic rock. “Oracle Song” is a downright earworm, complete with memorable melodic twist on a familiar lyric, “…when I was seventeen” – except the narrative it spins is harrowing rather than nostalgic. Indeed, this song is the furthest possible statement from nostalgia, and fittingly, its final note is unresolved. Which, in true earworm style, makes me want to pick up the needle and hear it again.
“You’ll keep your body and restore your soul six times in your life, each time will be more bold,” Haley sings to the seventeen-year-old she wants to reach with her oracle song. This album sounds to me like a soul restored a sixth, or maybe seventh time depending how you’re counting. Each has been more bold. And each leaves me waiting on the next.
Listening to: Side A; Side B
Cooking: An omelette and a glass of wine