Le Ren – Morning & Melancholia
Secretly Canadian – 31 July (Digital) | 12 August (Physical)
Containing four songs occupying just under 13 minutes, Le Ren’s debut EP for Secretly Canadian is undoubtedly the shortest release I’ve ever reviewed, yet in terms of emotional impact Morning & Melancholia is as heavy a hitter as any similarly styled, full-length acoustic folk album I’ve heard, by anyone, in years. Within ten seconds of my first airing of the heart-crushing opener, Love Can’t Be the Only Reason to Stay, I was thinking of Karen Dalton and Kate Wolf, and of the haunting beauty of (the verses of) Aldous Harding’s lower register performances (such as Zoo Eyes and Imagining My Man). Yeah, it’s that great, and amply illustrates the potential for Le Ren to be a huge star in roots circles.
In following two long out of print, self-released EPs and a couple of stand-alone cuts, as the opening track of the inaugural release for a (consistently excellent) new label, on its own the song is enough to inspire instant adherence in listeners to follow Le Ren’s every move henceforth. Indeed, if anyone is somehow unmoved by this intensely expressive performance, they must surely possess a heart of concrete.
I recently reviewed a lovely album entitled Gathering, the debut release by Montréal’s Maybel, yet although when I did so I’d previously heard of Le Ren – being Maybel’s (and the city’s pop-punk duo Skunk’s) Lauren Spear – as far back as two years ago, I somehow failed to join the dots between the two, but am now thankfully up to speed and fully onboard. I have learned that she had audiences routinely reaching for hankies to dab away tears when opening for Orville Peck last year and, pleasing me personally from a provincial pride perspective, that she was born and raised on Bowen Island, a 19.36 sq. miles rural community of less than 4,000, situated off West Vancouver in the Salish Sea, just a spit from where I live. And, considering that at just 26 she already sounds like a fully-formed songwriter and performer, it comes as no surprise whatsoever that Spear has studied bluegrass and folk music in workshops and at festivals across Canada for well over a decade, and that she grew up entrenched within the colossal catalogues of Neil Young, Bob Dylan and, I feel most notably, John Prine.
While Love Can’t Be the Only Reason to Stay is, as I’ve clearly inculcated, an extraordinary opening statement, the three other songs forming Morning & Melancholia – an unquestionably artful EP born of personal tragedy and bereavement – are further evidence of Spear’s arresting talent and compositional maturity. As the title alone would indicate, the delicate and deeply personal How to Begin to Say Goodbye is another tender gut-wrencher, and the aching country ballad, If I Had Wings, is so drenched in wistfulness it’s almost too much to bear. Finally, opening with the lines Through a tear I stare at your picture / I can still feel your lips close to mine / The day I lose your memory / Is the day I lose my mind, the closing track, The Day I Lose My Mind, is for a departed loved one and, again, even with the presence of a gentle honky-tonk piano to elevate proceedings ever-so-slightly, it is sorrowfully laden in the extreme. Like the first two tracks it clocks in at under three minutes, but the emotional wallop this woman can deliver with 180 seconds or less is remarkable.
It may be among the most lyrically heavy-hearted and sonically spare releases you will hear this or any other year, but as an introduction for most to the gorgeous music of Le Ren, despite its brevity – rendered irrelevant by its quality, anyway – until her first full-length collection arrives next year, in the interim Morning & Melancholia is an absolutely essential listen.
Morning & Melancholia will be released digitally on July 31st and as a 12” EP on August 21st.
Bandcamp: https://lerenmusic.bandcamp.com/album/morning-melancholia
Photo Credit: Mariah Hamilton