With airy, dream-like vocal delivery, Prudence glides through intricate and experimental art-pop songs with a strange intimacy and tenderness. Based between Melbourne, Los Angeles, and New York, the singer-songwriter has spent the past number of years refining this sound, and now, with the release of her new album Growing Closer, she has all but perfected it.
The record, currently available as a limited edition LP, is a sprawling body of work that bends all sorts of surrealist folk-pop sounds into one musical vision. Sauntering through these ten tracks is an experience unlike any other.
On her new album Growing Closer, Melbourne/Los Angeles/New York-based artist Prudence crafts a surrealist folk-pop wonderland.
Prudence, with her feathery voice always sounds as if though she’s singing right above your left shoulder, breathing each syllable into your ear. It’s an unusual listening experience, but an undeniably captivating one. And while the album flaunts various ghostly qualities, infectious grooves and catchy melodies continually seem to creep up on you from nowhere.
Album opener Time Marched On is a percussive slice of lounge-pop that holds a steady, hip-shaking rhythm throughout—as if to keep control of the time passing throughout its duration. The second track Emmanuelle seems to lend from 60’s/70’s psych, driven by huge intrumental melodies, and further establishes the expansive scope of the album.
Growing Closer is the album’s dark, sprawling centrepiece. With eerie, ambient laughter and other-worldly synth sounds, the track stretches into new sonic universes again. These cosmic themes are taken further throughout the remainder of the album; Hold The Night sounds like some far-away alien dreamscape, while Ride explodes at its conclusion with searing guitar sounds and uncontrollable rhythms.
By the time the record’s closing track Days of Wine and Roses reaches its end, you’ll have been roped in completely by Prudence’s far-reaching sounds.
Do yourself a favour and listen to the new album above.
