by EJ Kneifel (@ejkneifel)
“I want it to,” Eliza Niemi begins, little rattle, chucking her limbs to stay underwater–except the water is the present around her, its depth the curt end of her fingertips. Staying Mellow Blows is her third album; it is inside of her. She is a child the way Fiona Apple is a child: She is right. What she says is true. What she sings is what I hummed to myself, playing alone in a winter park. The potency of low sensory experience in solitude–even more powerful now, having loved, having returned, layer after layer, to the self.
The whole structure moves inward to outward, her teetering on top of the obelisk of thought, trying to place a full foot into articulation. Coalescing into its own flushed momentum, a two-wheeler swollen with feeling. Even when there is someone else, there is a membrane (death, a shrug of emotional unavailability). A letter. A hand on a shoulder still touches a surface. Even the picnic blanket lullaby of “Rolling” brushes the other’s hair while they turn away in sleep.
Niemi, without prescription, makes each song the shape that it is. Her words are the first clod, her throat strings, percussive lips. Dotted alveolars feather into a labiodental; the repeated “coast to coast to coast” turns fully around the edge of dimension. Vowels are puuuuuuulled as part of the lacy precision ("small but in charge"), “I” or “you” their own lines, resounding alone.
The instruments come up and around this first shape: the fullness of a cello like the thick gravy of headache; soft with her voice pluck (“Don’t Think”). Old betrayal the sound of a clarinet, true cowboy maroon (“Not Killing Bad Energy”). Mortality flush with guitar (“Trust Me”). She tries to lift up, “it’s enough for me, it’s enough for me, 1234567 … eeeeee… but it’s not enough for you anymore” – instruments swallowing the caving. Pure thought, under her breath, given the topography of song.
I kept thinking about Polly Pocket belongings, specific and useful. “Leave Me”’s tassel boots, the high button collar of "Sushi California," “Death 1”’ and “Death 2”’s deep felt from before. It is so pure, so streaming, fibre cable alive; it is joyful. Jubilation in the items of self articulation. Each its own precious occasion.
"Walking Feels Slow" is the pit of the stone fruit, every pore a wire. Wake-up gasp-whisper. “What am I close to? Something new, something new,” peripheral side of a wall, cascading, rightward-up, rightward-up, “I’m here, I’m close, I’m so close to the end.” Italicized surge. The strange sharpness of a peony.
Each song, in every syllable, is at the centre of itself. Every ridge comes out from its siphoning core. Niemi, fierce, keeps each precious, dense and wielding. She lets no one ruin her book. She looks us right in the eye, eyes, breath short. Wanting to have it all covered.