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| REVIEWS |
Azure
Ray
Hold On Love
(Saddle
Creek)
Whenever I’m feeling a slight twitch of sadness, I always
reach for Azure Ray for comfort. Like all of their albums, Hold
On Love is no exception. It is not the fact that Azure
Ray puts me into this sadness, but it is the band’s ability
to lift a pessimist’s soul. In their new album, they begin
with “The Devil’s Feet,” combining a simple
piano composition with clever lyrics. Slow and steady, the melodic
rhythm gives their fourth album a good start.
While closing my eyes, I imagine the comfort of rain hitting
my bedroom window. The equal amounts of sadness mixes with their
slight amount of optimism to create an elixir we commonly know
as good music. In their title hit “New Resolution,”
there is a break from the comfort of their slow beats to a more
synthesized and orchestrated “break up” song. As
the song removes the pessimism within this writer as well as
in Orenda Fink and Maria Taylor’s voices, it reveals the
true sound of Azure Ray.
For the creative mind, this album has reached new levels for
the band. It first places them on the map with MTV, which is
sort of a great achievement if you like MTV. Second, its ability
to keep its “sleepcore” persona in depressing lyrics
may leave them deeply rooted to their origins. Hold On Love
has this uncanny way to keep me in a dream world where the worries
of reality have disappeared with the sound of two women’s
voices. I find myself listening to this album more when I’m
happy rather than when I’m sad. Time and again it has
always felt as though Azure Ray can take my hand and guide me
through the tough moments in my life, but this album has been
holding my hand through everything for the past couple of weeks.
Other songs like “Look to Me” and “Across
the Ocean” can sway a person into their past and remind
him/her of a love once had, a reminder that Azure Ray still
has the power to trouble the optimist. Each song is delicately
aligned and sewn together with emotions and memories that actually
relate to the people listening. In their last track, aptly named
“Hold On Love,” Azure Ray reveals their final quantity
of optimism. Words like “just hold on love / even when
I scream and fight / even when I swear I don’t love you
/ just hold on tight,” a person is automatically reversed
from the gloomy and heavy rain on a window pane to a subtle
amount of sunshine beaming through the cracks in the clouds.
Hold On Love drives a person from one emotion to the
next, leading one to a final happy ending. Just like a fairy
tale.
Reviewed by
Simone Jung
April 7th, 2004 |
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