Silje Nes makes music that sounds incredibly private and intimate. She sings words, but they barely register-- her soft, wispy voice indicates a human presence and conveys a shy personality more than it expresses any specific ideas. Her arrangements are hypnotic and often quite beautiful, built upon layers of fragile guitar lines, warm bass notes, rhythm, and ambient tones. It's all very delicate and finely detailed, and it consistently calls the listener's attention to its own space and structure. At least in the sense that putting on one of her albums can feel like entering a very specific space of her own devising removed from the logic and conventions of ordinary places, her music is rather like an audio approximation of installation art.
Opticks, Nes' second album, isn't dramatically different in style and tone from her debut, Ames Room, but her craft and production values have improved in immediately obvious ways. The songs are tighter and more disciplined, instrumental parts ring out with a crystalline clarity, and guest musicians add variety to her palette. Her compositions have become more dynamic, but in subtle ways-- despite a consistently placid mood throughout the record, the pieces in her songs are constantly moving and progressing. At her best, Nes' songs filter the steady repetitions and gradual transformations of minimalist music through the aesthetics and instrumentation of bedroom electronica and dreamy indie rock, creating a hybrid that feels familiar and cozy while still being singular. Even a cover of "Silver > Blue", a song from Thurston Moore's Trees Outside the Academy, comes out sounding like a Nes original.
At this point in her career, Nes has carved out an interesting and appealing niche, but she is still developing as a songwriter. Her pieces are uniformly beautiful and thoughtful, but her tunes and instrumental motifs tend not to stick out in one's memory. Tracks such as "The Glass Harp", "The Shades", and "Crystals" reward close listening with moments of quiet brilliance, but if you're not moved to pay full attention, most of Opticks will wash over you as an indistinct haze. To some extent, this is just what happens with quiet, introverted music intended to be taken on its own terms-- it gets shrugged off, overlooked, underrated. However, if you look at the incremental progress from Ames Room to Opticks, it's clear that this is the work of an artist who is still finding her way, and there is reason to believe that bolder, more immediately tuneful work will come in her future, hopefully without sacrificing the muted, low-key quality that makes her art so attractive and charming.
