I get along without you very well

A gorgeous ghost baby descended from Thom Yorke and Mark Hollis, slow but not very long songs built from Arkbro’s voice and Graden’s clarinet (and a small ensemble). Sometimes it’s voice and synth or voice and masses of trombones. As if Arkbro absorbed all of her feelings and then sang them over a remembered palimpsest of a hundred records from the experimental section of her local record store, but only one sound at a time. Miraculous, and unlike anything else going right now.

If you’ve come to know Ellen Arkbro for her excellent, extended minimalist compositions, on albums with programmatic titles like For Organ & Brass, and Chords, then I get along without you very well may be a surprise. It’s a brief, lovely collection of slowly paced art songs that place Arkbro’s poised, slightly mannered vocals at its forefront. The magic here happens in the interface between the gradual movement of the musical material – lovely lungfuls of brass and woodwind, arcing splashes of cymbals, eerie scratches on strings, and dappled, muted piano – and Arkbro’s careful exploration both of her melodies, and the nuts and bolts of the lyrics, turning phrases around in her mouth, embracing the richness of language. If it’s a curveball, then, it’s a very welcome one – Arkbro and Graden are working here in an idiom that connects them with other, similarly inspired, writers like Stina Nordenstam, Julia Holter, even elements of later-period Scott Walker.