Melodie Nelson: Meditations On The Sun

Waiting is the kind of bleary-eyed introductory song that gently pulls you into the album proper, but there are several other songs on this album that would work as a salute to the sun just as aptly - as the album title suggests, the sun features heavily throughout. This may suggest a summery feel, but don’t let the sun-worshipping fool you. Lia Tsamoglou is a child of darkness. And when she’s not being a child of darkness, she’s being a child of sadness. There should be a radiance to the title track’s incantation ‘Sun, shine of me today’ but it sounds more like a plea from someone in a dark, lonely place.

These are sad songs but they don’t go too far beneath the surface, and the simple melodies are contained within well-trodden song structures. The album rolls along without really peaking at any point, though there’s a delicate intimacy created and a pleasing consistency to the album, even when partner Kell Derrig-Hall drops in as a more prominent vocalist toward the end. Tsamoglou’s use of a primitive drum machine against more organic instrumentation works to heighten her ethereal vocal, a ploy also mastered on the recent Teeth & Tongue album. There’s not much in the way of new tricks here, though it is a refreshing sidestep from the lo-fi drone of her previous band Moonmilk.