Russell RockwellIn sound and subject, Thayer Sarrano’s music continues to drift skyward. Her Southern roots seem distant and intangible throughout her new album Wings Alleluia, but as she relinquishes her grip on temporal matters, there’s still a twangy timbre that winds through the record’s enveloping shoegaze. This sonic collision inspires a reckoning between heaven, earth, and the exhausting rhythms of everyday life.
Sarrano’s consistently edifying timbre often makes her songs feel like worship music for the unknown. It’s impossible to consider her songwriting without invoking Leonard Cohen, a fact the Athens songstress addressed herself with her recent cover of Cohen’s “If It Be Your Will.” But the connection between the songwriters is best understood through their common use of theology as a lens to parse both the sacred and the profane. Sarrano grew up in a monastery, and it’s obvious that this experience permeates her sense of self and songwriting, although as a standalone work, Wings Alleluia was mostly inspired by her recent paintings and sketches.
While Sarrano’s music isn’t optimistic in the traditional sense, she confronts empty space and loss with deep understanding, which finds translation in the album’s consistently vibrant yet haunted pop. On the most anthemic tracks, especially the call-and-response of “O My Soul,” Sarrano channels and subverts the repetitive epics of contemporary Christian music like Hillsong, even while drawing from similar inspiration—although it must be noted her interest in the Psalms is a vehicle for a more tangled and murky destination. Though her sound has little in common with country songwriter Iris Dement, the two share an outsider perspective, a mournful sense of self, and a refreshing spiritual outlook which slakes a throat parched by the psychedelic intellectualism duplicated by so many male songwriters in the folk-country vein.
Throughout the record, Sarrano’s voice swells with the gentleness of Hope Sandoval and the passionate trepidation of Chelsea Wolfe, but her connection to the listener is most convincing when the veil of reverb is pulled back to reveal the artist at her most fragile. Few songwriters seem to have the same capacity of feeling as Sarrano, and fewer still are able to translate that into their songwriting without it sinking into an ocean of overwrought sentimentality. Indeed, the question of how maudlin this album may be can be answered by the audience’s level of patience with religious imagery, but with the gentle pull of tracks like “Red Sun,” Sarrano seems poised to win over even the most jaded listener.
Acceptance amidst uncertainty is a concept central to most religions, and with this in mind Sarrano assumes the role of a prophet of happenstance. She relays her own wisdom, which is specific enough to be engaging while remaining ambiguous enough to be applicable to whatever fulfillment or closure the listener is seeking. Still, the disconcerting reality Sarrano presents is the truth that peace is often not the absence of anxiety or conflict, but rather a willingness to be present in the whirlwind—in this case the roaring crescendo of tender shoegaze.
More Info
Web: thayersarrano.com
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