Carly Bond, who information as Meernaa, describes her songwriting course of as “psychedelic meditation,” an expertise so immersive that when she will get into the circulation, she forgets to eat. On her debut, 2019’s Coronary heart Starvation, playful guitar solos and kaleidoscopic manufacturing lent the music that boundless exploratory feeling. Her follow-up, So Far So Good, is a extra soulful, introspective assortment of people songs whose fingerpicked guitar, gauzy synth strains, and swooping string preparations diffuse like smoke.
If meditation has a purpose, it’s to have the ability to witness your feelings passing by slightly than letting them overwhelm or management you. Bond’s lyrics undertake an identical perspective. They’re stuffed with craving, however they preserve an observational stance. Bond not often editorializes her emotions, as a substitute collaging summary imagery to gesture at them, so listening feels much less like studying a dream journal than watching an experimental movie interpretation of your individual goals. (I’m reminded of avant-garde filmmaker Maya Deren and Alexandr Hackenschmied’s brief movie Meshes of the Afternoon, which silently tells and retells a dream sequence, altering small particulars with every repetition.)
In her songwriting, Bond tends to drag from a recurring pool of phrases—“goals,” “tenderness,” “the center”—and pastes them collectively with out a lot give attention to narrative linearity. Moderately than feeling disorienting or incomplete, the disparate pictures construct into surprisingly poignant wholes. On “As Many Birds Flying,” Bond drifts via a chugging guitar riff and bandmate Rob Shelton’s ribbons of synth as she recollects water flowing, a sky turning lavender, and a lover’s voice echoing via a canyon. The scenes move with out a lot clarification, however collectively they set up a way of outsized surprise at love she as soon as skilled however can now not entry.
On “Mirror Coronary heart,” Bond describes varied points of somebody’s face with out utilizing sight: Every characteristic is a stand-in for an emotion it evokes, from the tenderness of their eyes to the wildness of their smile. When love and longing are so intense and amorphous that language falls brief, the writing on So Far So Good creates a constellation of tiny moments that talk to these grand emotions. Bond catches the glimmer in somebody’s eye or watches them flip over a stone of their palms, then asks us to attach the dots with our personal associations.
Her voice, too, conveys a wordless longing. On opener “On My Line,” she sings about anxiously awaiting a telephone name, however decides to bury her emotions. A grinding guitar riff flares and percussionist Andrew Maguire’s drums simmer as Bond escalates from a cautious falsetto to a wail, utilizing restraint and persistence to relay a way of barely contained frustration. “Bhuta Kala” is a plea to another person to linger in a state of mutual reverie. Right here, her singing meshes so seamlessly with the starry guitar and strings that it’d really feel just like the sounds are rising from the identical instrument.
All through the album, Bond yearns for love however isn’t in a position to grasp it. There isn’t any decision, only a fog of recollections and elliptical dream logic. However regardless of the depth of the emotion, the symphonic, elegant preparations make her phrases really feel accessible and alluring. On So Far So Good, she supplies a scaffolding of impressions upon which we’re invited to impart our personal narratives, making this music ours, too.
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