by Matty McPherson (@ghostplanetmatt)
When working with Claire Rousay on a split release, longtime collaborator Andrew Weathers dubbed her a “deep zoner.” At the same time, Rousay was self-identifying as the “bad girl of emo-ambient.” Across nearly half a dozen labels, her 2020 CV encompassed: drumming more akin to synthesia sound packs, a recording moonlighting as an announcement to leave the music industry, and ASMR pop crediting Tik-Tok in the title. I haven’t even mentioned her Bandcamp page, where she continued to test the waters of pop auto-tunery and longform vulnerability. Lots of people were releasing great music on a near-monthly basis, and Rousay’s dispatches were flabbergasting. Read any amount of commentary and you get this sense that you find Rousay’s music like an open invitation to listen in and let that stand as its own truth.
Partnering with American Dreams, Rousay’s latest, a softer focus, is a subtle new leaf. All the usual elements of her previous recordings are still here, albeit with greater spaciousness; Rousay’s partnership with a handful of chamber collaborators are a key element in that, imparting her songs their own dusk-tinged shadows. The art, shepherded by Dani Toral, matches Rousay in a manner that surmises the inviting, yet dilated zones she’s come to create. Not only do her cryptid flowers stand toe-to-toe though; Toral’s studio space is sampled as the starting ground of the album on “Preston Ave”.
While Rousay has moonlighted as a percussionist, she’s really a sound manipulator across the most varied and astute manners. The menial--a barcode scan or the water park, all become entrance points on her tracks and their journeys. The search for and the clank of a typewriter that strikes up on “Preston Ave” into “Discrete (The Market)” suggest a story, and Lia Kohl’s cello imbues a sense of vast space that glides through this market. Then, the song towards its climax: a wind chime droning and refracting in a most peculiar way. It invokes psychedelia, but of a manner emphasizing elasticity.
It is easy to suddenly lose yourself in the seamless pacing on the comedown that leads “Peak Chroma,” a glistening pop nugget that duets between Rousay’s autotune (lyrically built from an iNotes sketch) and the rustle of a cicada. Yet Rousay takes autotune as a sound to split off as a dizzying piece to compliment Kohl’s cello and her own synths. It’s as serendipitous as the recording of a conversation that over discusses the merits about branding on Instagram that closes the track and side a. Likewise on side b, Rousay layers a voicemail underneath Macie Stewart’s violin on “Diluted Dreams,” coming out of nowhere and leaving you on the floor.
Recently, she and collaborator More Eaze have lovingly used the codifer “emo-ambient” to define their work. Both artists’ usage of auto tune invites a personal energy missing in ambient zones. With it is truly that everyday angst and beauty of existing. So, whether that be through turning a Jimmy Eat World lyric into a rather honest album title or casually decreeing that “Labradford’s s/t is the original emo-ambient album,” the references are not to be taken as trite!. This album’s characteristics reconfigure and warp my own relationship with that ambient past. It deserves to be filed next to Lil Peep and Young Jesus, as much as Ana Roxanne and even Stars of the Lid. Even with their music akin to watching a star’s half-life fizzle, still named their tracks like, “Fucked Up (3:57 AM)”--they appreciated the small human fallibilities.
In a way Rousay’s own “Stoned Gesture” feels like a reimagining of the famed droners when they were just Texas stoners in a basement. Alex Cunningham’s violin drones recall the deep steadiness of an Aix Em Klemm cut, while Rousay’s croon swoons towards ambient slowcore. Rousay often lets it recede into silence; she fiddles with a lighter, an energy reminiscent of the spacious beats in a Space Ghost interview. Every time she and Cunningham come together, a breath of cathartic bliss washes over.