Few artists are as adept at fusing electronic music’s warmth and coldness as Kelly Lee Owens. What makes Owens’ work so distinctive is her equal proficiency as a songwriter and producer; her vocals are as confident and captivating as her beats. Inner Song, her second album, boasts a variety of styles, floating between tight pop structures and extended club grooves. What ties the record together is her unusual ability to join the physical with the emotional.
Straight-up techno bangers, like “Night” and “Melt!,” juxtapose the ethereal calmness of Owens’ voice with the commanding presence of a throbbing bassline. Dancefloor tracks like “Jeanette” are more intense than on Owens’ first record, with driving synths over hard, unfailing kick drums. She occasionally approaches R&B territory: “Re-Wild” is slow and pulsating, as waves of her voice cascade over a grinding beat. “On” weaves an introspective style somewhere between dream pop and trip-hop into a long and vibrating rhythm, without a seam to be seen. Even on the tracks that veer toward more conventional pop structure, pockets of experimentation still exist—on “L.I.N.E.” her voice trails off and fades away, leaving nothing behind but a simple synth sequence.
Owens’ self-titled debut album played with sounds that felt spiritual, almost new age, like the tablas on “Kingsize” and sitar drone on “8.” On Inner Song, that meditative quality comes less from instrumental texture and more from the actual form of the songs. Though she drifts across tempos and dabbles with a variety of drum patterns, loops—both instrumental and lyrical—provide the record’s through line. On “Wake-Up,” life’s circular patterns are made explicit: “Wake up/Repeat again/Again.” Owens writes with clarity and simplicity, using her own voice as something like a synthesizer, processing a phrase and then repeating it as she sings subtle variations in timbre and tone. Her lyrics are, in their own quiet way, a celebration of the pleasures of solitude and self-love.
The unexpected opening track, a wordless cover of Radiohead’s “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi,” offers a sort of formal thesis statement. Owens’ interpretation emphasizes the Steve Reich-like qualities of Jonny Greenwood’s guitar line, stretching it into an undulating synthesizer pattern. Forgoing vocals, she distills the song’s harmonic essence, stripping it down to emphasize a single part of the whole, evoking a state of trance-like contemplation until a jittery breakbeat crashes through.
The framework of Owens’ sound may be familiar now, but plenty still surprises—particularly an appearance from fellow Welshman John Cale on “Corner of My Sky.” Like so many of her songs, the track swirls a handful of chilly synthesizers as it imperceptibly rises toward a fully embodied emotional climax that reaches for the sublime. Cale’s fragile, weathered voice lends a different texture from that of the album’s other tracks, though its underlying production is similar in tone. Toward the end of the song, Cale sings in Welsh, and it feels almost as if Owens is speaking through him to conjure the landscape of their homeland. Throughout, Cale’s words spin in mantra-like loops, becoming one with the programmed sounds that surround them.
For Owens, loops—both electronic and lyrical—are a grounding presence, like a chant uttered in a meditative state: a simple phrase or pattern that functions as a conduit to another world. With Inner Song, Owens seeks to take the listener to a place of healing, finding solace in the shelter of a repeated chord progression.
Buy: Rough Trade
(popitrecords.com.)
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