With Maria Taylor's 11:11 serving as de facto Azure Ray, anything Orenda Fink churns out could only be bonus, right? Considering the consistency of the group's canon, it seems at worst you're getting double the fix. Fortunately, the duo's split follows the Lennon-McCartney model, though with microcosmic stakes. While Taylor sticks to easy-to-swallow dream pop, Fink embraces spirituality and mysticism along with more challenging songwriting. The intrepid Invisible Ones exposes Azure Ray as less than the sum of its parts, though Fink's Björk-sized ambitions constantly grapple with her colorless adult-alt tendencies.
Harpsichord-laden opener "Leave It All" proves Fink capable of orchestration beyond guitars and processed strings. The song's languorous pace doesn't guarantee the packaged happy ending so familiar in Saddle Creek circles, not to mention Fink's spiritual gravitas: "The god to whom I prayed/ Played a trick on me good/ Now I see his face, it's just as well/ I leave it all." Fink parlays similar moral and spiritual conflict into several gripping ballads, tapping Flannery O'Connor Cliff's Notes and Haitian traditional music she encountered on a recent trip there.
A Haitian choir accompanies Fink on the haunting "Les Invisibles", delivering the necessary ooh's and harmonizing for the Stygian chorus: "We raise our hands and pray/ Les Invisibles/ We hold our heads in shame." The song's musical twin, closing track "Animal", features tribal rhythms and call-and-response vocals between Fink and the choir, though she overshoots the poignancy of the trite, repeated line "Who are you?" Unlike these ornate compositions, Fink's sparser ballads offer a starker and more realized perspective of the album's heavy leitmotif. Fink prudently lays down playful yet somber piano melodies, hedging her own apocalyptic countenance in the process. Glum narrative "Invisible Ones Guard the Gate", for example, gets away with lines like "Prophets, pimps, angels, whores/ There ain't no devil, there ain't no lord" because of its strangely jaunty piano line and blasé relationship with the dejected accompanying instruments.
Sadly, subtle tidbits like this are about the closest Fink comes to liveliness. "Bloodline" is a one-and-done rocker that's too dolled up and self-aware as a single to really grab anyone. The gauche string arrangement on "Blind Asylum" hints at a sense of humor, but can only do so much in two minutes to counteract an album's worth of doom. However, Fink's sepulchral fixation isn't inherently damning. Sufjan Stevens, for one, has proved a topic like original sin can actually propel one's music to unprecedented levels. Unlike Stevens, though, Fink hints at optimism solely through her lyrics, with little redemption musically. If you're striving to restore faith in a world of "prophets, pimps, angels" and "whores," you gotta do better than Sarah McLachlan melodies and a rented Haitian choir.
