colleen’s silent waves

The new Colleen record, Les Ondes Silencieuses (The Silent Waves), is magnificent. It’s not out for quite a while — June 19, on the Leaf Label — but I am so stunned by its beauty and perfection that I had to make note of it immediately.

Colleen has previously made music box songs, chirping little things fraught with cracks and more weak points than strong, evoking emotion and mood more than any sort of concrete idea. But that’s simply how Cecile Schott — the woman who records as Colleen — thinks and feels. The music is a very strong evocation and representation of her, this frightened unicorn of a woman who lives outside Paris and makes a living teaching English (or at least she did a couple of years ago when we kept up an email interview/correspondence for a few months).

I like Everyone Alive Wants Answers the most, far and away. Or I did, anyway, until hearing Silencieuses. This is easily her most focused album, much of it being based around the cello, a shift that makes sense as her live performances do as well. So yes, the new album is less bells and (dying, sorrowful) whistles and more finger-picked guitar flurries (but the flurry of a hummingbird’s wing) and the elongated sigh of the cello. And the parts weave and smash into each other like lovers on a path to a locale unknown, and it’s all a bit sad and comforting, almost mirror-like in its delicate and indescribable reflection of life. It is a very, very special record, the sort of encapsulation of a human soul that I am certain Cecile had her doubts about even releasing. Until you experience this one, please take a moment to listen to the earlier stuff — you will not regret it.