Where Shine New Lights
Tara Jane O’Neil excels at creating music that floats between traditional songcraft and ethereal, experimental instrumental settings. Words peek out from the surroundings, but never for long. 2014’s *Where Shine New Lights* is her seventh solo album and her first in five years. It finds the mystical writer and performer spending much of her time in the dark shadows of her sound. The album opener, “Welcome,” is the result of multitracked vocals designed to coalesce into the next track, “Wordless in Woods,” where it feels as if the path is still plenty obscure with enough reverb to ensure that the words (it\'s not so wordless after all) are hard to discern. It isn’t until the sixth track, “The Lull the Going,” that O’Neil uses a spare enough arrangement to bring out a melody that stands nearly naked on its own, performed as if in an empty church. “Elemental Finding” slowly emerges from ambient tones to reveal harmonies in the ominous arrangement. O’Neil proves to be a singer/songwriter who’s less interested in communicating through literal translations than letting listeners feel the conversation through instinct and intuition.
Tara Jane O'Neil's first solo LP in five years finds the ex-Rodan bassist, painter, constant collaborator, and tireless solo experimenter carving scenery out of sound. It's quite possibly the finest merging of the chameleonic O'Neil's song-based work and her more experimental side.
Tara Jane O'Neil welcomes listeners into her ever shifting sound world.
Where Shine New Lights, the seventh solo album from veteran indie songsmith and otherworldly mystic Tara Jane O'Neil, begins with "Welcome," a short cluster of multi-tracked vocals that drone on a note or two before spilling into "Wordless in the Woods," the equally ethereal but more traditionally arranged song that follows.