Review Summary: An absolute masterclass in pop production.
It was around 2014 when Norway’s Highasakite had managed to break through to the Australian market. It was a sound audiences’ craved - sparse, hollow, wintry; enveloped with bold and dominant vocal performances. While Highasakite had my full attention for a time, they now feel just an intermedium for introducing my interest in Emilie Nicolas, another Norwegian artist whose sound really resonated with me. I remember how floored I was hearing ‘Nobody Knows’; The way the percussion moved and evolved in this beautifully optimistic way. The way her voice was structurally sound but dynamically different. The way her voice melted over the music. And yet Emilie Nicolas never received the airplay or presence Highasakite enjoyed. I incredulously watched shots of her singing in front of thousands while barely raising a murmur here in Australia.
Granted, my knowledge of Nicolas might be limited purely by a language barrier - all of her press appears in Norwegian, understandably, which makes me thankful that she, like Highasakite and Aurora before her, sings in English. Yet this doesn’t take away from how brilliantly composed her material is, how it seems to puncture our understanding of pop music and yet simultaneously coalesce it. Both Let Her Breathe and Tranquille Emilie before it boast incredibly clinical performances in production and vocal ability. Nicolas crowns a sound unique to her in both records, demonstrating how rich and sonically detailed pop music can be.
I have trouble deciding which is the superior album, with both records occupying the same penchant for foley-based sound design and cavernously futuristic atmospheres. It could be argued the strength of Let Her Breathe has its roots in Tranquille Emilie’s numerous highlights, which are perhaps thematically more daring. ‘Dark Matter’ appears to address depression, buffeted with a vocoder harmonic undercurrent, while ‘Feel Fine’ lays down a pastorally decorated admission of acceptance that fittingly closes out that record.
Let Her Breathe pivots more deftly on topics of love and insecurity, Nicolas using pop music’s favourite tropes to speculate on her own trials with intimacy. Her turns of phrase surprise in both their simplicity and tact; “how ugly I feel when I’m revealed how beautiful you think of me” is a line I’m sure would even make Aaron Weiss blush, notwithstanding how comfortably it sits on ‘To The Moon’s propulsive beat. Like many of pop’s ilk, Nicolas understands plain and simple lyrics can provoke the most of intense of reactions simply by the way they’re sung. Nothing here is too verbose or challenging, rather, Nicolas’ tonally consistent and harmonically dexterous voice allows the themes to flower naturally.
Great records aren’t built on vocals alone and Nicolas’ team has an incredible feel for space and placement. Nothing on Let Her Breathe sounds out of place even when the sound sources are hard to identify or aurally ambiguous. The synths here are playful and colourful, padded out with a strong sense of low-end; ‘Tsunami’’s rubbery 808 grounds out an otherwise cheekily percussive track, for example, while the beat that drops during ‘No Human’ reminds me of MBDTF era Kanye. The record is mixed and mastered wonderfully and makes appropriate use of each pocket in both frequency and stereo spectrums.
I have my own grievances with catagorising music, which is something outside the scope of this review, yet it appears appropriate to label Let Her Breathe as pop music, its sugary melodies and glossy sheen fixturing itself firmly in the genre’s bread basket. Yet, Nicolas somehow subverts the superficiality of the whole endeavour to produce something more intimate and treasurable. It’s a record I keep coming back to, time and time again - just an absolute masterclass in pop production.
