GORJUS
A beautiful Sunday morning record, perhaps soft but not always serene. There’s dark depths in TEARS, often highlighted by shimmering guitars and synths. But always there’s that incredible voice, elegant and hushed.
Favorite track: Blue Sky.
A low dark voice carries this ethereal, atmospheric, & art pop-inspired album. TEARS follows up Hectorine’s 2019 debut with sketches of 70s soft rock production, folk melodies, and deeply lyrical songs that explore “love, loss, nature, and the cosmos.”
In 2016, San Francisco-based Sarah Gagnon formed Hectorine, naming it after her late paternal grandmother. The live band has gone through a few line-up changes over the years, but Sarah is now joined by Max Shanley on guitar, Matt Carney on bass, Betsy Gran on keyboards, and Laura Adkins on drums.
“TEARS was born one summer on the banks of the Yuba River, where Sarah would read Clarice Lispector’s Agua Viva aloud to her friends, and it’s also where it ends: in a cave across from their favorite swimming hole where one could hear her own footsteps if she listened hard enough. A ten-song meditation on the strange but not uncommon phenomenon of heartache.”
Here are some very nice words on the album:
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Upon listening to the first song on Tears, one might think that Hectorine’s sophomore effort would be an extension of the last: a foray into Laurel Canyon folk, an idyll disturbed only by the occasional synthesizer and the offshore fog casting a pall over the cypress trees. After all, with the Nico-esque vocals, John Cale-inspired strings, and hypnotic tambourine, album opener “Blue Sky” owes a lot to Chelsea Girl.
But enter “Heartbeat,” with its Rumours-era drums and 80s pop hooks so committed to the latter decade’s zeitgeist of excess that it even includes a key change in the last chorus, and suddenly the listener knows that this isn’t going to be the same type of rodeo. For one, the tension between the terrestrial and the celestial is turned up to 10, as evidenced in “Goodbye Spaceman,” a 70s-style glam rock farewell to a man who fell to earth, someone strange and unforgettable as Bowie himself. This theme is continued in “Satellite,” a slow cosmic burn which features a Songs-era Leonard Cohen picking pattern played on chorus-laden guitars which would feel right at home on any Cocteau Twins record; ethereal synths; and the metaphor of distance between lovers mirroring various divine orbits.
From the spaceship launchpad we are plunged deep into the ocean in “Saltwater,” a tropical midtempo number which recalls a certain Christine McVie track off of Penguin, and a saxophone so smooth it could’ve come off Yoko Ono’s Approximately Infinite Universe. Synth gem “Strange Phenomenon” is an obvious nod to Kate Bush in title, and maybe a more subtle nod in the use of the Fairlight and simple drum machine beat, both of which hearken back to Hounds of Love, but the veins of the stars and the planets still run through the lyrics like blood.
A little bit country and a little bit Eurythmics, “Don’t Cry” is the third song on the album that mentions tears, but it won’t be the last. It’s followed by “4 in the Morning,” which is spoken more than it is sung, and pays tribute to early 80s Anne Clark in electronic drums, talk poetry, and arpeggiated synths. The cover of Tim Buckley’s “Song to the Siren” makes the listener feel like they are floating on a VHS cloud above the ocean, watching the ebb & flow of the tides below, much like the sound of Julee Cruise a la Angelo Badalamenti.
Album closer “Agua Viva” is imbued with a quiet confidence of someone who, in losing someone or something, has gained something invaluable. It is both an homage to Clarice Lispector’s masterwork of the same title and the life-giving nature of the river, and it’s clear that the journey from A to B is neither linear nor circular; it’s more akin to that of an ouroboros—a serpent eating its own tail—where the alchemy occurs through eternal cyclic transformation. While there’s been no shortage of heartbreak on this record, any tears that are shed now are tears of joy.
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All songs written & produced by Sarah Gagnon except "Song to the Siren,” written by Tim Buckley.
In the context of TEARS, Hectorine is Sarah Gagnon on vocals, rhythm guitar, & auxiliary percussion, as well as synths on "Saltwater,” "Strange Phenomenon,” "Don’t Cry,” “4 in the Morning,” & “Agua Viva”; Max Shanley on lead guitar; Matt Carney on bass; Betsy Gran on keyboards; & Laura Adkins on drums.
Additional musicians include Geoff Morris on saxophone on "Saltwater”; Dylan Edrich on violin & viola on "Blue Sky"; & Jason Kick on guitar & bass on "Saltwater" & synth bass on "Strange Phenomenon."
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