Bel Canto: Radiant Green
Universal / Border

Has it really been twenty-two years since Bel Canto's last album? Apparently so, though you'd never know it from the state-of-the-art material on Radiant Green. It's not as if vocalist Anneli Drecker and multi-instrumentalist Nils Johansen hadn't been in contact during that gap, however, as a mini-tour in 2017 reignited the creative spark with songs that now appear on the new collection. As much as Radiant Green picks up where the Tromsø duo's electronica sound left off, the album's lyrics are honest in acknowledging time's passing and the urgency that comes with it. Yet while they might reflect the maturity of their creators, the songs retain the capacity to resonate across age groups when they consider momentous life choices to which anyone can relate. There is joy but yearning and melancholy too.

Available as a digital download, on CD, and as a double-vinyl set, Radiant Green is a reunion of sorts, given that the Norwegian outfit was formed in 1985 by Drecker, Johansen, and Geir Jenssen and the new album includes the latter, who left the group after its first two albums to form the solo project Biosphere, on two of the ten songs. Other musicians appear too, including associate member Andreas Eriksen on percussion and guests alto saxophonist Steven Brown (Tuxedomoon), cellist Frida Fredrikke Waaler Wærvågen, trumpeter Nils Petter Molvær, and singer Sondre Lerche. Erik Ljunggren's synthesizers, keyboards, and programming figure heavily into the album, and the Arctic Philharmonic's strings also appear.

Of course, Drecker and Johansen haven't been idle for two decades waiting for Bel Canto to re-emerge: she's issued a number of acclaimed solo albums and done other projects, and he's composed music for visual media and performed with the group Vajas. On Radiant Green, Drecker's in terrific voice, with many a song showing the remarkable vocal diversity of which she's capable. In one, she sings with the one-on-one directness of a mother speaking to a child, in another, she wails like a pack of banshees. Whether heard alone or stacked into harmonies, her voice is the dazzling centre around which the analog and synthetic sounds cluster. Fans of Cocteau Twins and bands of its ilk will find much to embrace here.

Stylistically, the songs cut a wide swath, and surprises of different kinds emerge during the fifty-two-minute set. One song is grounded in writing by Goethe (modified by Drecker), another pulls for inspiration from Scott Walker's “It's Raining Today” (from Scott 3), and yet another is a Johansen instrumental inspired by Linnutee tuuled (The Winds of the Milky Way), a 1978 documentary about the Finno-Ugric peoples. Adding to the variety, songs are sung primarily in English but in German and French too.

Entrancement occurs instantly when “Grass Mint Crisp” opens the album with a classic dreampop exercise, Drecker's voice alternately silken and soaring and the 7/4 backdrop dreamy in its melding of guitars, synthesizers, and (programmed) drums. A tinge of sadness surfaces amidst the euphoria, with the lyrics “These days are quiet, a new kind of quietness is filling the new days now / This room is empty, a new kind of emptiness is filling the both of us” expressing a wry rumination on life. With Goethe's words sung in German, the ominous “Erlkönig” sees Drecker at her most macabre musing upon the malevolence of the titular force, said to symbolize “the darkness in humans.” Bel Canto's sensitive side comes to the fore in the Walker-inspired ballad “Train Window Girl,” delivered in French and its languor intensified by strong saxophone and cello solos. Lovelier still is “Wave Without a Shore,” which complements a delicate vocal with Molvær's purring trumpet and Wærvågen's expressive cello. It would be easy to imagine the thrusting “Can of Worms,” on the other hand, as a club raver, though the song's notable mostly for Drecker's incredible vocal acrobatics.

June 2024