L.A.-based pop artiste Lael Neale utilizes minimal colors for the canvas that is her fourth album, Altogether Stranger, employing a monochromatic spectrum that shifts, ever so slightly, from song to song. Her brush strokes, meanwhile, replicate fine art drawings one moment and abstract splashes the next, with bristly comets occasionally crashing into Day-Glo pastels. Thematically speaking, it’s about life in her adopted home of L.A., aka the City of Dreams—yet, perversely, sounds much like New York’s fabled Velvet Underground fronted by Manhattan native Suzanne Vega. It’s beyond cool.
As on her last outing, Star Eaters Delight, the foundations for Neale’s stark soundscapes are built on a Suzuki Omnichord—an electronic autoharp, essentially, that comes equipped with imbedded rhythms. Lending a hand throughout is Guy Blakeslee, who also produced, though who plays what isn’t specified on the LP sleeve or Bandcamp page.
“Wide Water,” the lead-off track, sets the stage for the 32-minute odyssey with a remarkable observation about life circa 2025: “Every light lit needs darkness to be seen/My matches are wet and it keeps darkening.” The hope that once brightened our way forward seems to be in short supply, in other words, thanks to torrential downpours that are beyond our control. The riveting “All Good Things Will Come to Pass” expands upon the motif, exploring how the pact humans made with God way back when found us, unbeknownst to Him, crossing our fingers. The bouncy “Down on the Freeway” finds Neale stuck in the never-ending stream of people going here, there and nowhere. “Sleep Through the Long Night” replicates what happens when many of us climb into bed: “My mind is a jungle of sirens and stoplights.” The slack pop of “Come On,” for its part, delves into the mistakes we make day-in, day-out, as well as expectations that never come to pass.
Side 2 opens with the delicate “Tell Me How to Be Here,” a poetic ode about feeling out of place. Doesn’t much matter the city, town or suburb, whether the ground beneath one’s feet is grass or cement, it’s easy to find one’s self on the outside looking in—not because of the others, whoever they may be, but because of the baggage we carry with us. The stirring “New Ages,” about the lust for love, sports a strong VU sensibility, while “All Is Never Lost” finds a ray of light cutting through the dark clouds: “All is never lost,” she shares. The album closes with “There From Here,” about attempting to escape the drudgery of daily life but finding one’s self in a passenger lounge: “The airport’s a sea/With people just like me/Trying to get there from here/Killing the time/With our magazine minds….”
In short, Altogether Stranger is a lo-fi yet high-octane set that plays like what it is: a symphonic treatise about life in the post-pandemic age. Highly recommended.
The Old Grey Cat 