Nat Bartsch: Forever Changed
Amica Records

Issued on Nat Bartsch's own Amica Records label, Forever Changed is a sequel of sorts to the lullaby album Forever, and No Time At All the Australian pianist released in 2018. That album had a substantial impact and, chocking up millions of streams, clearly struck a chord, not only with new parents but listeners in general. Yet while Forever Changed perpetuates the lyrical beauty of the earlier set, it parts company with it in one key respect: whereas Forever, and No Time At All concentrated on soothing babies and their parents with lustrous meditations, the new release, while still wholly accessible to all, shifts the focus to the neurodivergent community, the move reflective of Bartsch's late diagnosis as an autistic/ADHD person. Seismic personal changes—divorce, new love, and a new family—also transpired in the time since that diagnosis. The intimacy of the earlier project is preserved, however, with the album having been recorded at home and her partner and seven-year-old son close at hand.

The album could be described as a suite of neoclassical lullabies, but her music resists pigeonholing by drawing on a number of genres, folk and ambient electronica among them. That character's due, in part, to arrangements that augment piano, harp (Mary Doumany), and strings (Lucy Warren on violin and viola, and Charlotte Jacke cello) with synthesizer (Bartsch), guitar (Hadyn Buxton), and ambient electronics (Bartsch, Buxton). All such elements are used in painterly manner to enrich the material, and it's tempting to liken the subtle application of sound textures to Monet-like dabs of paint.

That change in thematic focus, by the way, serves more as a background context when the material is wholly instrumental; depending on one's inclination, one might choose to simply bask in the music or see it as portal into further exploring what living in this world is like for someone diagnosed with AuDHD. Recorded at Sylvan St Studios in 2024 and co-produced by Bartsch and Buxton, Forever Changed opens on an incandescent wave when “Fizzy Feelings” wraps her piano patterns in a blanket of strings and electronic radiance. After that spell-casting overture, the longer “Thirty Nine” builds piano, harp, strings, and guitar into a blossoming expression of pastoral beauty. Offsetting the elaborately arranged pieces are serene solo piano lullabies that have Bartsch's fingerprints all over them.

The tone of “New Kinds of Love,” not surprisingly, is buoyant with optimism and infused with a sense of joyful anticipation for what's ahead. Sweetened with phrases echoing between piano and harp, the contemplative “Tokyo Drifting” likewise suggests someone lost in reverie and surrendering wistfully to spiritually replenishing memories. Pitched at a hush, “A Groundedness” exudes a hymnal quality that sometimes emerges in her music and gives it its quiet grandeur. The penultimate setting, “Arrival,” serves as a reminder of the project's lullaby connection when a child's laughter appears alongside the joyful music. Doumany is a consistently enhancing presence, the harp phrases she conjoins to piano throughout “My Favourite Person” merely one illustration. Through their contributions, the string players also amplify the textural beauty of the performances.

December 2024