Amy Blaschke- "Newage Daydream" album review
An album review by Nat Bourgon
Notes: All song lyrics that appear in this review were written by Amy Blaschke (Blaschke, Amy. Newage Daydream, 2021, self-released), and appear in this review for reviewing purposes.
All songs mentioned in this review were written by Amy Blaschke (Blaschke, Amy. Newage Daydream, 2021, self-released).
Blaschke, Amy. Newage Daydream, 2021, self-released.
Listening to Amy Blashke’s spirited, gutsy, variational full-length album “Newage Daydream”, the combination of her instrumentally roving curiosity and sage lyrical insights helps me learn to view my imperfections and work-in-progress trajectories through empathy’s binoculars. While digesting these enlightening songs, I am reminded of the importance of honoring life’s continuous learning curve and our own always-evolving brands of self-development.
From my perspective, Blaschke’s new songs play as capering strides of inspiration, tickling the remnants of doubt until a blustery draft of game-changing self-love and hopefulness spoons with our souls.
I picture the album’s cathartic, belief-bolstering opener “Glory Lightning” as a gratitude-filled hat tip to love’s boundless reach. Blaschke’s voice carries the certitude of an engaging leader and the patience and supportiveness of a five-star friend. For me, “Glory Lightning” stirs up the feeling that love is the best response to our life quandaries.
With its cautionary buzzes and pendulum-like chimes of commotion, title track “Newage Daydream” musically seems to evoke what a glitch in the communication department might sound like. “Newage daydream/mysteries of lightness”, Blaschke sings, with a fidgety, tense air. Personally, this song brings to mind the emotion of feeling astray in a corn maze without a tour guide, searching frantically for the referee called decipherment, that miraculous route of clarity where the gaps are filled in.
During the chorus of standout “Let It Rise”, Amy Blaschke vocally tiptoes up and down the multi-floor staircase of the human condition. She globe trots the idiosyncratic tonalities of each level of her vocal range to enchanting effect. When her voice dangles in airborne motion, downright transcendence is achieved. Listening to Blaschke’s vocal fluctuations, I envision what gliding from cloud to cloud in the sky of emotions would feel like, perusing for the softest, most authentic landing spot for our hearts. It’s that curling lift, that exploratory tilt in her vocal delivery when she pleas “let it rise/let your heart become this endless love” that helps “Let It Rise” earn its stripes as a defining song in Blaschke’s ever-expanding discography. This tune reminds me that if we aspire to build up funds of love with the same diligence as we give to building up savings of monetary funds, our hearts can truly learn to embody “endless love.”
The startling, trance-like sonic daze in “Precious” creates a fragmented, stark-sounding vibe. In my mind, the song’s instrumentation conjures a mood of moseying in between planets through outer space in remoteness, yearning for a moment of deep connection. “Leaving words unspoken is an empty gravestone”, Blaschke laments with a ghost-laden eeriness in her delivery. To me, this song summons the feeling of distorted, static-like disconnect in interpersonal communication and how getting our communication wires crossed can faze us. As the song progresses, I hear the trail to recalibration emerge through untying the stubborn knots of tangled-up next steps. “Precious” helps us acclimate to a rejigged sense of identity after we navigate change. Blaschke sings “I am a life, a jewel, a gem of light/My time on Earth is precious” with an energizing lucidity, and I am hereby filled with a desire to zero in on my priorities with determined aplomb.
“Sweet Surrender” is a consoling, rustic-tinged lullaby, garnished with concord. Blaschke slows down time’s usual fast-paced sprint of busyness to a languorous drift with her cozy, angelic vocals, which linger in the air subliminally like a recently squeezed lemon’s peripheral carryover. The chivalrous intonation of her acoustic fingerpicking offers the composure needed to face the life curveballs thrown, until that fateful moment when legibility resurfaces. Midway through, when Blaschke proclaims “Letting go always feels so sweet/Never incomplete/Just a chance to be” with a traceable hint of relief, it feels like a landmark turning point might have been spotted up ahead in the not-so-distant horizon. Blaschke’s earnest voice is expertly positioned in its otherworldly upper register forte here, infusing the song with a celestial flavour.
In my mind, “Rustle Til Free” feels like a song-based pep talk. At once sensitive and transformative, I feel that as we listen to this tune, “Rustle Til Free” is generously listening to us back, holding space for our setbacks to be compassionately acknowledged and our growth trajectories to be unfurled. I detect a presiding musical ambience here of shimmering tonality. I also hear traces of momentary bewilderment from life’s winding canvas seeping into the instrumental passages at times. “Rustle…” feels like an exploration of those testing moments when we feel chained to our current circumstances. I feel that this song helps expand our perspective so we can work on teaching our cold spells enough tenacity to forge ahead through the manure-like scents of drag until an upswing status is achieved.
I imagine “Circle” as metaphorically denoting the somersaulting, varying nature of our feelings. Life’s strange hybrid of circularity and motion feel depicted sonically. “Circle” begins and ends with a talkative synthesizer’s feral outcry, which feels like unprecedented territory for Blaschke’s songwriting. Yet its middle section literally circles back to honour her career’s greatest calling card, the atmospherically hypnotic dreaminess of her vocal’s upper register working in tandem with her intimately spare acoustic guitar humming. Hearing this song’s lyrics, I find perspective on how we process the contradictions that we are made of. I feel motivated to work at viewing these contradictions as baselines of possibility and preludes of exciting adventures to come, instead of as a fixed hand of cards that we are stuck with indefinitely for rounds. “Circle” reminds me of the value of looking at our lives in a less linear way, a way that at times might include looking back to reacquaint ourselves with valuable aspects of our past selves that got lost in metamorphosis’s backyard. When Blaschke sings “Circle the end to begin/Spin like a change in the wind" with footprints of discomfort's onset, doubling as a hiking trail to an influx of reinvention's opportunities, we can come to understand that while life may sometimes be filled with puzzling bafflement, we can learn to view the blindsiding moments of incredulity as valuable latitude for implementing game-changing pivots and adjustments. "Circle” encapsulates Blaschke’s intrepid willingness to stretch as an artist, while astutely reciting excerpts of her magnetic strengths. Listening to “Circle” sparks the thought in me that revisiting some underrated remnants of your former self that you paused from emphasizing for a time isn’t just a wistful endeavour, it can be a productive one, a floodgate opener to a course you haven’t yet charted and are enthused about pursuing now.
Album closer “Loving the Mystery” is unveiled with a clamorous, cinematic quake. The rattled-sounding instrumentation and the gutted vibe of Blaschke’s vocal delivery could soundtrack our disappointment of when love flattens unanticipatedly. As the epic eight-minute tune swells, the dejection gradually relents, and the forlorn aura initially conveyed in the vocals subtly flips the page towards an ambience of acceptance. “Loving the Mystery” launches with lamenting a deficit of light. It then spends its duration documenting love’s reliability, charting the widening laneway of increasing connectivity as love unassumingly weaves its way deeper into the proceedings, filling up an inopportune situation’s vacancies, stepping up as a heroic contributor to our initiatives of balance.
From my vantage point, Amy Blaschke’s latest album “Newage Daydream” encourages us to offer unconditional love to our own selves, including being loving to the aspects of us that we are working on developing. I feel that her music and lyrical wisdom can help us embrace the fluctuating range of feelings dancing in our inner panorama. Blaschke's record "Newage Daydream" helps me locate that elusive balance between initiating tweaks and amendments on one hand and granting wiggle room, patience and self-acceptance to my strengths and areas of opportunity on the other. From my standpoint, “Newage Daydream” is much more than a daydream, it is a vision board of tangible sounds and ideas for what our “striving for” reality can amount to, when our thoughts, actions, and essence consciously choose to elevate love to the forefront.
