Wendy Alembic - Collected Early Works - Tape (2015)

Labels: Dead Drunk With Love
Review by: MH

This is some sparse and predominantly acoustic guitar stuff from Wendy Alembic. I learnt from writing this review that an alembic is an “alchemical still of two vessels connected by a tube used for distilling chemicals”. It seems you can learn stuff doing this review malarkey. As far as the music goes, it’s the sort of thing I can stick on regularly at night or early on a Sunday morning. The songs on here feel fragile and delicate while the bedroom style makes everything feel natural. It turns out that Wendy has a background in jazz guitar and while there is an intricacy to the fingerpicking style, it doesn’t fall into the the trap of sounding too technical. A couple of songs halfway through feel a touch more experimental and these may be the songs she refers to on the Bandcamp page when she says “some songs aren’t songs”. I’d be keen to hear more of this as at its most delicate, this is pretty enchanting stuff like on “To Be Held” which is the most fragile and beautiful song on here.