Novo Amor - Birthplace

October 19, 2018 - All Points

Maybe it’s because the days have become increasingly dark, but my desire for sentimental crooning has increased swiftly as fall turning to winter. I like to suspend myself in an endless state of heartbreak until the springtime comes. Some call it Seasonal Affective Disorder. I’m a romantic, so I call it bittersweet catharsis. Life on Earth is sad most of the time. 

Novo Amor, also known as Ali John Meredith-Lacey, debuted his first solo album Birthplace, and it satisfies dark, nihilist cravings. I can’t resist the sheer volume of feelings on this album. Even the optimistic tracks ‘Emigrate’ and ‘Utican’ are singed with shadows like determined battle marches. The level at which Lacey appeals to emotion is so direct that it’s almost exploitative. “Almost” being the keyword. Life on Earth is exploited most of the time. 

It would be difficult to discuss Novo Amor without addressing the elephant in the room, so I am going to go ahead and get it out there. His work carries a few striking resemblances to Bon Iver. Both have a similar musical style, vocal range, mesmerizing lyrical blur, and two-word Latin stage moniker. Both occupy a close corner of the Indie music world. But, where Novo Amor stands out is his love affair with instrumentation. His vocals are nice, but his mastery lies in his arrangement, his perfect timing of instrumental moments. He morphs textures around and then straight through his listeners like a magician of the fantastical kind. A sound sculptor comes to mind. The volume of sound and its meticulous production occupies the space of a full-sized orchestra, of which Lacey’s voice is only one single dimension. I think there is expansive space in our ears for this forceful knock-the-coal-out-of-your-heart music. When it is done well, some of us find it easier to stop crying and sleep at night. Others feel this way too. Thank goodness we are not alone. Life on Earth is lonely most of the time. 

I like all the songs on this album, and they are best enjoyed together. Some, like ‘Birthplace’ and ‘State Lines’ are independent in nature. Others, like ‘13494,’ rely on their surroundings to shine, functioning as curated devices on the album as a complete work, whose ebbs and swells like tossing satin sheets in the wind swallow me whole. If I come up for air long enough to think logically about what is actually happening musically, I realize there is an impeccable attention to detail and craft in the production as well as a wide variety of instruments employed. Lacey is a card-carrying maximalist—maximum volume, maximum instrumental variety, maximum emotional prickling. When he sits down to compose a song, his goal is to maximize the stimmung. The tracks on Birthplace are polished gemstones, fundamentally irresistible. And it might not be hip to like fine jewelry at the moment, but we all press our noses up against the glass encasing the Crown Jewels. We all collect beauty when given an opportunity. Life on Earth is ugly most of the time. ☔

Birthplace, an album by Novo Amor on Spotify