You Sound, Reflect is not the sort of album that announces its presence with a demonstrative flourish or bombastic clatter. If anything, it's just as likely that you can put on this CD, listen to it, and not remember anything about it once it's finished. Even when paying close attention, it has a drunken dreamlike quality that can make even the firmest grip slip. Tara Jane O'Neil's songs are much like her singing voice-- understated, quiet but not timid, pretty but shaded with a wearying sadness. She sings the way people talk to themselves when asleep. These qualities work for and against her on this record.
From the first moments of opening instrumental "Take the Waking", the tone is set-- pretty stretches of wordless singing collide with loud hesitant amplified guitars. When it works-- as on gorgeous lullabies like "Without Push" or "The Poisoned Mine"-- O'Neil's plaintive whispers and words meld perfectly with the electro-acoustic backdrops. When things falter-- as on a rusting creaky track like "Howl" or the stumbling "Love Song Long"-- the effect is less enchanting than disorienting and disconcerting. More successful is the rustic crawl of "Known Perils" and the insistent wet echoes of "Famous Yellow Belly". Interspersed between the actual songs are brief interludes running the gamut from shy and introspective (the electronic burbling of "Tracer") to pensive and ominous (the banjo-flecked "I Call You").
Even on the less successful tracks, there are moments to savor, such as the off-center harmonies of "Howl", and the looped violins transformed into buzzing songbirds on "Love Song Long". It's a credit to O'Neil's skills that such moments of transparent studio manipulation actually help in establishing the provincial atmosphere of this album, a mood reinforced by repeating a melodic phrase from "The Poisoned Mine" in the final track. This mixture of technology and rustic elements gels into an organic whole, approximating the creak of a porch swing through relays and circuits. For those interested in getting a closer look at the stitches, you'll want to listen to Bones, a odds and ends collection released around the time of You Sound, Reflect.
Given that Bones is a collection of disparate tracks, there is a interesting sense of cohesion, as if this is a more haphazard sibling to the unerring consistency of You Sound, Reflect. Conveniently enough, three of the better tracks from the parent album ("Without Push", "Famous Yellow Belly", "The Poisoned Mine") are available in versions that don't differ much from their final state, excepting a lack of bells and whistles (and, in some cases, violin). Joining them are efforts that would seemingly slot in just fine on the official record, like the tremulous "Highwire" and the queasy "Another Sunday Saint". On the other end of the spectrum are out-of-character offerings such as a trip-hop re-engineering of "Bullhorn Moon" (a track from Tara's first album, Peregrine), and the drum-machine driven "Enter This House". For a woman that's on record singing, "my desires put me to sleep", Tara Jane O'Neil proves to be quite the restless spirit. Thankfully, these restless labors produce sumptuous fruit.
