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<\/a>Briana Marela\u2019s All Around Us (Jagjaguwar) is a stunning mural of blurry sonic photographs, a pastiche of memories, friends, lovers, nature, and most of all herself. Aided by producer Alex Somers, Marela has given us an intimate record about reconciling oneself with the world and the world with oneself, a record where organic sounds are treated, stretched, and teased by electronics to create gorgeously ambiguous settings for her fragile, but sharp and powerful, voice.<\/p>\nThe biggest, boldest strokes on the record come on the infectious \u201cFriend Tonight,\u201d comprised of elements anyone could recognize: a subtle guitar jangle, keys that surge and push at the highest clouds, and drums that punch and swing with a directness they eschew for most of the record elsewhere. To go with that ethereal melody, the lyrics tell a story about going out in the night and shaking off some unspecified drama in order to relearn how to live in the world. \u201cI can\u2019t face the darkness,\u201d Marela sings, the hook belying a little grin. \u201cCome over, but don\u2019t come back to my bed tonight. I just need a friend tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n
That sense of putting pieces back together surfaces again and again. The bedroom disco of \u201cTake Care of Me\u201d uses rickety keyboard beats distorted around the edges and a blanket of keys rising and falling behind waves of a vocal that recalls R&B balladeering mapped onto a thinner voice. Here, a single word like \u201cmatters\u201d is elongated into something ecstatic and repeated like a poem\u2019s refrain, hammered home and shot through with glowing hope. \u201cDani\u201d\u00a0 is awash in drones and revolving chords that recall an elegy and lyrics that obliquely turn from a warning about \u201closing herself\u201d into the encouragement of, \u201cYou\u2019re strong if you remember.\u201d<\/p>\n
All Around Us<\/i> is meditative, but never monochromatic. Its use of drone and static draws the listener in and make him appreciate the tiniest of details like a quiver of the voice and a long pause on the title track that rotates on the mantra of \u201ceverything is now.\u201d But once the listener begins to think he knows what to expect after a couple songs of similarly somnambulistic bliss, Marela delivers the rope-a-dope \u201cSurrender,\u201d the LP\u2019s most ornate track, bursting with life and detail. It is an ecstatic devotional song, but with lyrics like, \u201cI\u2019ll give you all I\u2019ve got\u201d rotating with \u201cCan\u2019t decide what it\u2019s like when we\u2019re together,\u201d at the song\u2019s end, it\u2019s clear she is completely devoted to questioning.<\/p>\n
All Around Us<\/i> has a friendly relationship with music of the last century. Steve Reich feels like the biggest influence, with impressions of his pulse through most of these songs. Paul Simon\u2019s and Suzanne Vega\u2019s deceptively-easy shifting from the immediately personal to the lyrically abstract is a torch picked up for most of these nine songs. Hints of Meredith Monk get full flower in the record\u2019s climactic title track and to an extent in the denouement, \u201cFurther.\u201d Marela uses and juxtaposes these elements, but most of all, she uses what she needs to build a framework for her personal voice, bending what\u2019s come before and her technique to exactly what she needs to say.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Briana Marela\u2019s All Around Us<\/i> is a stunning mural of blurry sonic photographs, a pastiche of memories, friends, lovers, nature, and most of all herself. 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