Circuit des Yeux - (2009) Sirenum LP

 

De Stijl – LP 070

Sirenum, her second full-length for De Stijl, arrives at a perfect time then. While not a summer record by any stretch (more suited for nuclear winter) now’s the moment when Fohr can stake her own identity, if she hasn’t already. To say nothing of maturity or growing up, here the mythos of Circuit des Yeux have been solidified into a phantasmagoria that splits the spectrum between Zola Jesus’ classically trained horror-psych and Scout Niblett’s unlearned, hyper-grounded, mope-core. More often than not, though, Fohr’s range on Sirenum scatters outside those parameters, meeting extremes face-to-face, giving way to softer hues found on the blissful but wicked folk of “Serenade to Sophia” or the unnerving dissonance found in the tribal, floor tom–led “Calling Song.” Going out of her discomfort zone, the songs explore an uncharted terrain displaying a stylistic leap. Be it the deep blues/dead eyes on stand-out “Paranoid,” the backmasked hysteria in “Shedevil,” or the wisps of acoustic finger-picking on “Swallowing Hearts,” the record becomes a healing seance, as opposed to the self-mutilating, almost novice purge of Symphone.