Frances Chang released her new album, beautiful beyond words, Psychedelic Anxiety.
Living in New York, Frances Chang is a musician and multidisciplinary artist. As she described it herself, her genre is “slacker prog”…offbeat but brimming with spiritual and emotional resonance. We got to know her first with the band Giant Peach, then with her debut album Support your local nihilist and she doesn’t want to stop !
In close collaboration with longtime friend Andrea Schiavelli, we follow an immersive journey through eight poems, as she likes to consider them.
We start with ‘Spiral in Houston’, softly entering her realm through layered voices in a very folksy style. The track deconstructs and glitches slowly, the guitar gets harder and her vocals less harmonic.
“The song is about psychic self-harm. And how that can take a compulsive, spiraling shape…the dark side of looking for answers.”
Frances, as most of us, is looking for answers, and so, she ends the record with her most poetic and philosophical track, ‘Rate my aura’. Patti Smith comes to mind for this very prog, very psychedelic song. Secured by Nick Llobet’s guitar, Andrea Schiavelli’s bass and Liza Winter’s drums, Frances lets us take a peek inside her head.
We don’t have control over what we don’t yet have control over (…)
I’m not advocating abdicating.
But it’s a bloody race against yourself
Nevertheless, my favorite track is ‘Body of the Lightning’. As I wrote this article, I was on a train listening to the record. It was dark outside and all I could see were different cities passing me by. Her voice, the sound of rain, the ethereal synths, the loving words, everything was Frances Chang. This is her, in her bedroom, recording. I felt connected to her by that “braid of light” »” she talks about. I was blown away. I hope this album finds you in the same mood.
Listen to it fully and go follow her: Website | Bandcamp | Spotify | Youtube | Instagram