Robin Bacior – Light It Moved Me
Spirit House – 31 August 2018
Robin Bacior’s third album Light It Moved Me is at once timeless but also transitory. It is timeless in a sense that it cannot be pinned down to a particular era, a particular period. In this way, this collection of songs can be taken on neutral territory, one without being pushed here or there by musical tastes. I don’t mean that it is bland, in fact far from it, I mean that it is what it is in the best way possible.
It is also transitory because there are echoes, memories, influences from a number of times and places, a synthesis of much that has gone before. There is a hint of Laurel Canyon, a scent of jazz, a taste of West-coast folk, all a mixture that becomes just right at a certain time of the day. Listen to the second track, Eyelids and you will see what I mean.
If there is one fault with this – and this is where it gets difficult to separate personal taste from an objective review – it is in places overproduced. In Modern Confusion, there is too much instrumentation across the singing. This may well appeal to many, but I would like to hear what Robin sounds like with just piano or just guitar.
Perhaps I’m yearning for that early Laurel Canyon feel over the other attributes, but you can have smooth and edge in the same song. However, as I say this is personal taste winning out over critical commentary – a permanent battle for reviewers as I am sure that Robin herself must know from her own work as a music journalist.
If you are looking for a theme for this album, then you won’t have far to go. Light comes up time and again, from the title track to the final track. She says that with this album she was “Looking for signs in shades of light” and here they are with light shrouded in All Easy and the sun rising in A Story of Our Times, not to mention the Light It Moved Me and the final track.
When you get to the last track – You Must Believe in Light – this is the epitome of where I started. Not pinned down but reminiscent, tight yet loose. Gentle even, the words shining through, an overall feeling of comfort and relaxation, but giving time to reflect. And this is where, having given the album the one listen, you go back and start again, ‘trying anything once, the second time only…’
https://robinbacior.bandcamp.com/album/light-it-moved-me