Ever since she began putting her name on the front of her albums, Tara Jane O'Neil has perfected the art of writing songs that perfectly encapsulate both the comfort of misery and the misery of comfort. On In Circles, her sixth full-length, O'Neil once again couches these themes in the folk music/tape loop aesthetic she's consistently revisited throughout her solo work. While that may make the album sound like a rote sigh-by-numbers exercise, In Circles might be the best non-Rodan release O'Neil has been associated with.
What makes this album stand out is O'Neil's ability to seamlessly mix electronics (such as the aforementioned tape loops, as well as some judiciously used feedback and guitar effects) into songs that, left alone, could very well have come from the dilapidated porch of a forlorn Kentucky shack. Indeed, one of the album's more straightforward tracks, "Blue Light Room", plays as straight country-and-western. O'Neil's plaintive voice is abetted solely by guitar, drums and pedal steel, the perfect backdrop for lyrical sentiments such as, "I found languor and love in a bottle."
The more adorned tracks on In Circles, however, don't lack the homemade charm of their less encumbered brethren. The album's opener, "Primer", begins with what sounds like wind chimes naturally colliding. Over the course of the track, that sound is transformed into a glistening, shimmering curtain of sound-- it's an obvious manipulation, but sounds as natural as its originating source. O'Neil blends sounds in a swirling manner that's not dissimilar to the way she paints her record covers. The delicate distortion and feedback that introduces "A Room for These" ebbs and flows by itself, then gently gives way to the song's soothing waltz.
Her instrumentation choices blend into the tracks in a similar fashion. Soft, melancholy melodica chords sound off like timid foghorns in the background of "A Partridge Song". Instead of clashing with the gentleness of the song, their comforting dissonance finds a fitting home within O'Neil's measured acoustic plucking and her fragile voice. She might bury her vocals demurely on most of these tracks, but don't let that fool you: Tara Jane O'Neil is at the height of her creative powers, and In Circles is a confident document of her strengths.
