Where Shine New Lights

Tara Jane O’Neil excels at creating music that floats between traditional songcraft and ethereal, experimental instrumental settings. Words peek out from the surroundings, but never for long. 2014’s Where Shine New Lights is her seventh solo album and her first in five years. It finds the mystical writer and performer spending much of her time in the dark shadows of her sound. The album opener, “Welcome,” is the result of multitracked vocals designed to coalesce into the next track, “Wordless in Woods,” where it feels as if the path is still plenty obscure with enough reverb to ensure that the words (it's not so wordless after all) are hard to discern. It isn’t until the sixth track, “The Lull the Going,” that O’Neil uses a spare enough arrangement to bring out a melody that stands nearly naked on its own, performed as if in an empty church. “Elemental Finding” slowly emerges from ambient tones to reveal harmonies in the ominous arrangement. O’Neil proves to be a singer/songwriter who’s less interested in communicating through literal translations than letting listeners feel the conversation through instinct and intuition.