By Berlinda Recacho
At a recent live show, I felt an almost tangible connection between the band and the audience and I had an epiphany: that it would be a far better world if our political and economic systems were driven by the power of art. Music was the inclusive force that brought us all together and held us there, transformed and transfixed. Music is a language that doesn't rely on words or grammar to get the point across. Admittedly, I love lyrics, but Laetitia Sadier is fluent in creating moody, thrilling sonic dimensions where nothing is lost in translation as she weaves in and out of French and English. It's like watching a film in another language and becoming so immersed that the subtitles are an afterthought; the gaze, the gestures, the settings and interactions are just as important. Listening to Sadier's new album Rooting for Love is an exploration within and without, reflecting inward while projecting outward. Enigmatic double meanings can be found in almost every track. The album title itself can be read as a rallying cry or as an immersive search.
Sadier opens with "Who + What", chanting, "Escape the fortress/the walls are falling down", creating a double meaning of freedom and vulnerability. "The realm of potential" reverberates throughout the song like waves crashing against the ticking, foreboding staccato of the shore. Throughout the album, a chorus of voices -- dubbed The Choir -- supports Sadier, like an inner conscience of Sixties Bossa Nova background singers, dueting directly with her, stepping back into the crowd as ambient sound, even creating percussion and texture like instruments as bassist Xavi Munoz drives the beat. Sadier's own voice is a marvel; she is able to soar and float, levitate and hover, then cut ballast and sink and descend into an almost guttural hum, sometimes within the same song. "Panser L'inacceptable (Dress Up the Unacceptable)" showcases her command of this range as she turns neatly on a dime from searching and pensive to demanding and insistent.
Tempo changes and false endings abound. "The Inner Smile" -- masked by a poker-face -- urges us to "Become aware of the planets above/Conjugate with the earth below", before fading out and re-emerging as a driving disco flute behind a chorus of dialogue. "Protéïformunité (Protein Form)" starts out gentle and shimmering, iridescent and meandering like the surface of a soap bubble, then shifts in scale from pattern to landscape. "Une Autre Attente (Another Wait)" is thrilling and sophisticated, the soundtrack to a mid-century spy thriller. "La Nageuse Nue (The Naked Swimmer)" celebrates the integration of the secular world, using voice as rhythm, a humanist version of religious vocal music. "New Moon" offers cautious instructions to "This unique experience... Dethroned by the bewilderment... Dreaming new forms into being."
Two songs are outliers in the collection, putting more emphasis on wordplay. "Don't Forget You're Mine" is an almost Sondheim-esque conversation as monologue. Only the singer's perspective is heard, choreographed and timed, as if presented on the musical stage and there is a breezy menace under the obsessive level of detail:
"Since we came back from your lecture/you were/quite overexcited/no time for hugs and kisses/too many calls/from all your friends... been waiting for too many hours/come here/sit down/hang up and come/but please stop laughing so loud/and now/give me your phone/okay, okay/everyone knows you're so successful... just don't forget you're mine."That last line is charming and sentimental on the surface, but it's also a warning, vaguely threatening and passive-aggressive. "The Dash" might be a connector of words, or else a mad sprint to the end. "Through the center/The discreet shine of your darkness." This Is the most wordy track on the album, a manifesto of intentions that almost crowd out the music. Sadier's cadences and inflections read more like poetry, lending a sense of enigmatic mystery to the bright keyboards and bossa nova chorus, "Into the night/That plays inside..."
Rooting for Love ends, balanced precariously between hope and dread on "Cloud 6". Organ patterns buoy up The Choir's horde of vocalists in an uneasy, almost paranoid rant. So far removed from the halcyon promises of the storied Cloud 9. Sadier declares: "Dishonor is keeping me/from the gifts I've given you/I'm not fucking around/you're halfway dead." Her voice stops in its tracks before going off the proverbial cliff -- or else she takes the plunge -- but either way, you're left hanging. The archaic word "elsewhen" refers to "an other time; another point in time." I have recently heard it used to describe a point of spacetime that is outside the range of the light we can see, that is "real" but not to us because it is outside our range of observation. Laetitia Sadier's futuristic retro sound possesses this same quality. Rooting for Love is familiar, like something heard in a dream, transposed on the waking world. It feels out of time, rooted simultaneously in the past and the future.
Rooting for Love by Laetitia Sadier is out now via Drag City.
[Photo: Marie Merlet]