“There are words and there is music and those two things combined make songs. Those songs can be further combined into albums that, if the sun shines favourably, seem more than the sum of their parts. Chloë March’s album “Nights Bright Day” – now re-released on the Hidden Shoals label – is a work of intellectual shadows yet the light of the new day always makes it through her dark clouds in a manner that transcends any potential depression.
Much is made of repetition in the music that provides the platform for the introspection that appears to motivate Ms March. An artistic choice is an artistic choice, however, and the effectiveness of that choice is illustrated in the simple piano figures that cause “Eucalyptus Night” to sway as if sighing as the world described in the lyrics spins to a sudden stop. The simplicity of “Winter Deep” provides a further example and, as if driven to describe the ethereal, Ms. March uses her musical witchcraft to cast a spell that turns all that would be wistful into something hypnotic.
Maintaining a particularly steady pace, and “Nights Bright Day” is nothing if not consistent in that respect, can often cause the mind to wander for, as we all know, variety is the spice of life. The overall effect here, however, is not stuporific but instead curiously uplifting as if the mesmerising effect were a mystical salve for the troubled spirit.
Beauty is in the ears of the beholder and these ears behold beauty.”