Listening to Enter Now Brightness, an album rooted in seismic shifts in the songwriter’s life (becoming a parent, relocating to Manchester from native New Zealand), you could easily draw the conclusion that for Nadia Reid, ditching familiar locations, routines and patterns in favour of fresh surroundings and new priorities packs plenty of potential for meditative relaxation and therapeutic soothing of nerves. Or at least it’s difficult to think of many more gracefully calm recent collections of songs.
The songs on Enter Now Brightness (Reid’s fourth album, and first for Chrysalis after earlier releases on Spacebomb and Todmorden’s reliably excellent Basin Rock label) favour a contemplative mood: the album often gives the impression of Reid revisiting and revising memories, moments, places and people gathered and encountered during her decade as a working musician, drawing inspiration from reflecting on the past whilst stood on the verge of an unknown future shaped by major changes. It’s hard to determine that for sure, as Reid is certainly not into soul-baring autobiographical specifics here: the songs leave enough space for the listener to find their own connections and points of resonance, without ever slipping into wispy abstraction or obscure games of hide and seek. Instead of providing instant gratification or easy answers, these are songs that work their way in gradually.
Reid’s previous albums have been inclined towards folk-orientated or predominantly hushed and acoustic settings. Worked out with long-term collaborator, guitarist Sam Taylor and producer Tom Healy alongside Reid’s long-standing band, Enter Now Brightness expands the familiar, deliberately toned-down palette considerably. The more assertive likes of “Changed Unchained” and “Hold It Up” are closer to the brooding, muscular yet tasteful ends of artful indie-rock. Even so, the album never loses its becalmed poise, and Reid’s clear voice (as expressively resonant as ever) helps maintain close links to the songwriter’s past output, as well as minimizing the risk of the proceedings sliding into anonymous slickness. Elsewhere, more subdued tracks like the yearning opener “Emmanuelle” and the effortlessly epic piano balladry of “Baby Bright” (a definite, seriously beautiful highpoint with its subtle echoes of Judee Sill) reside nearer to Reid’s old musical comfort zone, with superbly affecting results.
The world is in urgent need of balm for frayed nerves right now. Warm, inviting and soothing without slipping into anodyne cosiness, Enter Now Brightness might just be the right prescription.
