Montreal-based keyboard basher Claire Boucher, who prefers to be thought of as a ‘group’ called Grimes, is a complex lady.
Asked to pin down what this, her second full-length album in two years, meant to her, she could only say it was a ‘quest for the ultimate sensual, mythical and cathartic experience’ and a vehicle for ‘psychic purging’. Indeed.
While her intellectual dissection of this 13-track romp might leave most people nonplussed, the intriguing synth textures, pounding beats and intelligently poppy vocals that pepper it will bring everyone with a good ear right inside.
Listening to Visions is like peeking into the nest of an electro-loving magpie: second track ‘Genesis’ mixes Depeche Mode-style keys with BBC Radiophonic warbles, welded to a spectacularly funky beat; ‘Oblivion’ dips into that gorgeous river of John Carpenter-esque synth sounds College and Zombi have made so hip lately; ‘Circumambient’ sounds a little like Ministry on the bottom end. And that’s just the tip o’ the iceberg.
More importantly, thanks to her brilliantly elastic vocal and taste in scuddingly danceable beats, Boucher never sounds like somebody else’s bitch. She’s a crooning, screaming, hooting slave to her own beat, with the pipes to be a brainless popstar, the brain to be a faceless producing genius and the wit to reduce herself to either status.
‘Nightmusic’ aside, the major cuts may be stacked at the front end – but this is nonetheless a sweaty, highly wrought album throughout.
We suggest you grab it, give it a good few spins, get drunk to it if necessary – but pay attention. This is where mainstream R&B and pop producers will be coming to steal textures for their divas to groan over for the next year – and you’ll wanna be the first to point it out.