Some songs seep from the speakers and into the ether of our dreams. While the notes and chords flash like colors in the sky of the night visions, melodies, rhythms and rhymes flow through the lower atmosphere, hurricane-like gales one moment and soft summer breezes the next. Faces and figures from today and yesteryear may appear, some beloved and others with names we once or never knew, populating Dali-esque scenes. They make little sense, these cacophonies of surreality, but such is the case when acetylcholine, dopamine and neurotransmitters—the brain chemicals responsible for dreams—are in play. What we remember when we wake are wisps of once-vibrant fantasies.
Such a fragment settled on my pillow Monday morning. This past weekend, as I mentioned yesterday, found us dog-sitting for friends and wreaking havoc with the algorithms of their TV’s YouTube app—mostly Nanci Griffith clips and David Hoffman docs. At one point, I did a quick search on my phone to determine what next to watch and Lili Mare’s live “Forgive” video filled the small screen. (Then I found what I was looking for: Hoffman’s How 50,000 Hippies Changed America Forever. Interesting piece.) The song and performance landed in my subconscious, obviously, as its melody reverberated from the recesses of my mind when I woke the next day.
Lili Mare is a Cologne-based singer-songwriter who, to quote her Instagram page, crafts “sad songs and bad jokes.” She’s folky yet pop-oriented, and incorporates plenty of “shoegaze”—a term I despise, by the way—into her oft-laconic sound. Her songs lap and sometimes crash to shore like towering sonic waves, while her vocals curl into the crests. Her sound is more Opal than Mazzy Star, if that makes sense, though not as heavy. It’s quite cool.
The EP opens with a 30-second snippet of piano and conversation, somewhat akin to the distant voices we sometimes hear on the periphery of dreams, while the songs unreel like deep thoughts that strike us late at night. They’re distinct sections of a soulful symphony, in a way, bleeding into and feeding each other. “How to Be Brave,” inspired by a conversation with a dear friend, is one highlight.
Sigmund Freud posited that dreams are both glimpses into the unconscious mind and picture-puzzles fueled by wish fulfillment, while other scholars theorize that they’re simply the brain’s way of de-cluttering itself and/or akin to an idling engine. Whatever they are, the snippets we remember often mesmerize us. Such is the case with the sonic dream that is Lili Mare’s The Light. It’s a 17-minute trip well worth taking.
The Old Grey Cat 