Shannon Wright- Division
a review by Nat Bourgon
February 5th 2017
Shannon Wright's music usually conjures up the feeling of being stuck in a creaky, unfamiliar science lab late at night, right as it dawns on you that the experiment you are in the midst of has gone wrong, off course. Even in Wright's most harmonious passages, there is always an underlying tension in play; an alarming, anxious feeling that frenzy is inevitable, just biding its time, awaiting its impulsive moment of infliction.
On her 1999 debut album "Flightsafety", there is a thread of instrumental minimalism, and a lonely, broken tone that runs through her voice, which helps soothe the snaky, unrestrained nature of her songs. Her debut features an outpouring of emotion, yet the overarching temperament of the album is disheartened more than enraged.
Wright's sophomore album 2000's 'Maps of Tacit" begins with a lovelorn, introspective song called "Absentee", which continues to build upon the hushed, acoustic intensity that "Flightsafety" offered in large supply. However, as "Maps of Tacit" unravels, Wright's melancholic, reflective whisper turns to a hardened, ballsier, fiercer yelp. Emotional release evolves to ferocious outburst. It's as if she lets loose her inner mad scientist within, and asks the guitars to pipe up, and match the more piercing, harsher climate of her venting. While sometimes albums with a changed approach can get bogged down by the transition phase, the delight of "Maps of Tacit" is actually in gawking at the progression itself, as it's unfolding. "Maps of Tacit" is my favourite Shannon Wright album because it highlights the evolution of her crushing, dejected whisper increasingly morphing into a confident, dominant, commanding wail, with the instrumentation following suit, becoming more and more thorny and restless. On "Maps of Tacit", then, in the process of evolution happening before our very ears, we get both blue Shannon and blustery Shannon, without either completely succumbing to the other. To eat a scrumptious musical meal, you need to cook the ingredients together first. During the cooking, the ingredients which start out as distinct entities, slowly combine and conjoin. "Maps of Tacit" is so special because it is a real-time voyage into not the eating, but the actual musical and vocal cooking process. Wright's ingredients circle around one another, at odds, before becoming coupled, and then finally ingrained, albeit reluctantly.
Over the last seventeen years since "Maps of Tacit", Wright has covered a lot of ground. She has made abrasive, edgy sounding records that focus on her electric guitar, such as 2004's blistering "Over the Sun" and 2013's "In Film Sound", spiked with rawness and power, and she has made more melodic, and spacious albums such as 2007's piano driven, direct, cleaner "Let in the Light" and 2009's stylistically varied, and dreamier "Honeybee Girls".
I always appreciate an artist's willingness to challenge themselves to try on new musical hats; to push themselves in directions that feel uncharted, exciting, and enticing to their own selves. I have enjoyed witnessing the shifts, and variables that Wright's career has ventured through. However, I have longed for many years for Wright to make an album balanced between serenity and disruption, without masquerading the importance of either to her art. With her new album "Division", Shannon Wright has finally again tapped into the double vision, and compounded synergy that "Maps of Tacit" was birthed from, while scoring the most operative seam yet between her dissension, repose, dread, and conviction.
"Division" zeroes in on that stripped down, intimate vibe that I've always gravitated towards in Shannon Wright's past albums. Wright achieves that personal, introverted chord here, while incorporating her signature unexpected quakes of blare and
discord into her work. She withdraws some of the exasperation and indignation from her voice, while maintaining her strength and verve, leading to the most proportionate, counterbalanced record of her career. She lets traces of her wistful, heartfelt head voice that I loved from "Flightsafety" back into the mix, without letting us forget about the thunderous roar that she has amassed. These songs show the most progress to date on her mission to reconcile the stillness and the storm of life through
sound and lyrics. "Division" excels in its ability to harness vulnerability and backbone in
tandem, and thus constitutes her most malleable, finest collection since 2000's skyscraping, pioneering "Maps of Tacit." How fitting that for an album in "Division" which seems dead set on claiming that the mad scientist is in and open for business, after prolonged renovations, a song titled "Iodine" is the penultimate chapter. "Maps of Tacit" may have revealed the path of least resistance to Wright's new office, teasing the blueprints, but it is here in "Division" where Wright seizes the keys, and decorates her new digs with both mementos and movement.
