Nadia Reid’s ‘Enter Now Brightness’ is an album unfettered by generic pigeonholes and working in complete service to artistic expression. Alongside moments of reflection and introspection, we witness joy, light and a piercing optimism that ruptures this album with vibrant colour.
Nadia Reid has admitted she considered a self-title for Enter Now Brightness, her fourth solo album which arrives some 14 years after the self-released debut EP ‘Letters I Wrote And Never Sent’. The reason such a thought occurred to her can be heard in the playing of this fine singer-songwriter album, for this is audibly the album in which Nadia Reid definitively sounds like an artist that has arrived. This is not to suggest for one minute that she has walked a slow path to get where we find her today; I would argue that as early as that original EP, it was obvious that Nadia is a writer and voice with a natural style and purity of tone elevating her above the pack. Nevertheless, as the actual album title suggests, Enter Now Brightness simply feels like a record made by a singer assured and comfortable with her place in the present-day musical fabric. This is an album unfettered by generic pigeonholes and working in complete service to artistic expression. Yes, there are melancholy moments, passages and interludes of reflection and introspection. Still, equally, we witness joy, light and a piercing optimism bursting through the low clouds and when these rays appear they rupture the record with vibrant colour.
Undoubtedly, some of this upturn can be attributed to positive changes in Nadia’s personal life. Following the frustration of her third album and tour being derailed and delayed by the Covid pandemic, Nadia confessed the blank calendar made it a tough endurance during which she feared for her musical career as “I had this sense of urgency. I had this fear it would all disappear as things move so fast and I was watching my peers do so well.” On the other side of this low, however, life’s warm rays of sunshine have shone down on her, not least with the birth of her two children. With that massive life change has come a relocation from her native New Zealand to Manchester in England, a city alive with music, culture and history which must seep into her psyche even if her daily interactions are more around the nursery school runs than the nightlife. This has all fed into this latest release, with the choice of album title firmly on point as a catch-all for songs that pulsate with a sense of hearing the bang of a starting gun. Or, as Nadia puts it, “standing in the wings of a theatre and waiting to go on stage. It’s the idea of life beginning now.”
The sound of the record moves further away from the simple acoustic guitar and voice setting she began with. Producer Tom Healy (whose credits include Nadia associate Tiny Ruins) and long-term guitarist Sam Taylor help fill out the audio to a full band sound. In fact, Nadia has focused her energies on finding her voice and delivering a vocal performance of heads-up conviction, readily admitting her own guitar playing serves as more of a functional songwriting device and has never been that central to recording processes. A song like Changed Unchained is bristling with glorious drums, synths and energy, where there are guitars, they shimmer with electricity and purpose. Cry On Cue commences with some pounding Elton John-style piano chords, but as the bass and mid-paced drums arrive, Nadia thrives on this solid foundation, allowing herself semi-spoken inflections as she moves with the feel of lyric.
Baby Bright has the grandeur of a standard, and the production emphasises the epic potential of the number, with distant horn punctuations sounding like far-off flashing lights as the intensity moves between flexing and fragile near silences. Second Nature begins with gentle acoustic tones, but when we hit the “loving you” centrepiece of the song, there is an air and breeze that seems to inflate like a primary-coloured balloon. There is a similar lift, highlighted by sliding electric guitar notes, flying into view quite addictively during the chorus parts of Hold It Up as Nadia sings of “holding it to the light.” Album closer Send It Down The Line considers the chains of our hopes and dreams passed both ways between parents and their offspring, a weight carried throughout this record wherein deep emotions are frequently married to the most luscious of sounds. Nadia Reid has arrived folks, do not miss out on this one.
Enter Now Brightness (7th February 2025) Chrysalis Records
Bandcamp: https://nadiareid.bandcamp.com/album/enter-now-brightness