Narc. Magazine Online
Reliably informed
Elodie A. Roy discovers an album filled with sadness and ghostly refrains
Wax Nine Records
Released: 07.10.22
This is Johanna Warren’s sixth solo album since 2013. The singer-songwriter moved from L.A. to Wales, started recording on tape, and her style became barer with years. I’d Be Orange, the opening track, is a sweetly exuberant guitar song reminiscent of anti-folk and early Beck (in his more melodic moments). It is unlike any of the other tracks on the album.
Most of Warren’s (love) songs carry within them a barely concealed gloom – a pleading, indefinable sadness. Some of them are comparable, in their openness, to the confessional ballads of Marissa Nadler (with whom Warren previously toured). Warren’s chameleonic voice keeps changing and wavering; sometimes it sounds strained and ghostly, and other times it returns – in its full, amazing presence.
