Neale, Lael: Altogether Stranger (CD)

Lael Neale’s minimalist drone pop draws inspiration from the Transcendentalists, the alienation of modern life, and a rich array of musical influences - ranging from Dionne Warwick and John Lennon to primitive American gospel and Spacemen 3. Her expansive new record, Altogether Stranger, was written and recorded in the early morning quiet of Los Angeles. Clocking in at just 32 minutes, the 9-song LP covers an unexpected breadth of musical and lyrical terrain—from garage rock nursery rhymes and creation myths to Motorik dance dirges and solitary Omnichord meditations.

A brilliant lyricist, Neale has a unique ability to uncover the extraordinary within the mundane, tackling themes of polarity that recur throughout her work - country vs. city, humanity vs. technology, isolation vs. society. This album is her third collaboration with producer Guy Blakeslee who helps expand the tonal palette while staying true to Neale’s commitment to the raw immediacy and hand-made intimacy of home recording.

Reflecting on her lo-fi, D.I.Y. ethos in her newsletter Consensual Sound, she writes:

“I love doing things the wrong way. It’s so rare that we get to do that in life. Even as artists, I notice a slow and steady conformity set in as musicians become legitimate. I do it too. How else would we fit into the font, size & waveform of streaming services. I rebel in minute ways—like refusing to follow a recipe. In the end, I’m just like everyone else: I want to belong.”

Altogether Stranger was conceived after three years of oscillating between rural solitude and urban chaos. Neale explains: “On returning to Los Angeles I felt like an extraterrestrial landing on a dystopian planet so I’m writing from the perspective of a being from another realm witnessing the peculiarities of humanity.” The 32 minute album finds Neale perched at the piano in a hilltop bungalow, looking down on a rare curve of Sunset Blvd. Here, in this daily ritual of writing, singing, and painting - what David Lynch referred to as “the Art Life” - she creates the space for her most adventurous work to date.

The album’s centrepiece, “Tell Me How To Be Here,” paints a stark and haunting portrait of her return to Los Angeles, transmuting a dissociative unease into a woozy, dreamlike reverie, echoing the Velvet Underground with the distant chime of “Sunday Morning” bells. Neale’s crystalline voice floats above Blakeslee’s ambient tape loops and ghostly, disintegrating Mellotron, evoking the disorientation of waking up in a world that feels so ordinary it becomes strange.

1. Wild Waters
   
2. All Good Things Will Come To Pass
   
3. Down On The Freeway
   
4. Sleep Through The Long Night
   
5. Come On
   
6. Tell Me How To Be Here 
   
7. New Ages
8. All Is Never Lost
   
9. There From Here