After a very busy week I’ve made it to another weekend. It is off to a good start, as my CD order from the UK arrived on Thursday night just in front of the Canada Post strike. This means my favourite new musical discovery – metal band Arkham Witch – is serving as the soundtrack to the weekend. Awesome.
This next review is also a recent discovery, also awesome, but very much unlike Arkham Witch.
Disc 1782 is…Peacemaker
Artist: Vera Sola
Year of Release: 2024
What’s up with the Cover? Looks like Vera Sola is building a house up in the high country. Building a house is hard work, particularly when the air is thinner, and Vera looks to have stopped briefly to swoon. A good swoon always restores one after a bout of the vapours.
Fear no, gentle readers! Before you know it she will be back up and busily installing drywall. Should another bout of swooning descend at least she’ll look resplendent it in that white and red dress as it overtakes her.
How I Came To Know It: I believe I read a review this album on “All Music” a website that provides a small number of reviews to go alongside a comprehensive listing of weekly new releases. Wondering if there’s anything new out by your favourite band? All Music can help you find out. Anyway, I liked how this record was described and decided to give it a chance. I liked it and before you know it I bought both “Peacemaker” and her 2018 release, “Shades”.
How It Stacks Up: I have two Vera Sola albums (which as far as I know is all of them). Of the two, I’ll put “Peacemaker” narrowly into second place.
Ratings: 4 stars
If you like a side of Gothic creepiness mixed in your pop music, then Vera Sola is for you. On “Peacemaker” she spins tales that at first merely intrigues, but after multiple listens blooms into a genuine haunting.
It is hard to describe Vera Sola’s music. It is a little bit of folk, a little pop and a little…secret midnight blood ritual? It is not the kind of immediately accessible tripe you’ll hear on a pop radio station. You’ll need to take a bit of time to let “Peacemaker” cast its spell on you, but if you give it the chance, the record has layers and layers of musical mystery to reveal.
Things begin, as they often do, with the voice. Vera Sola sings with an unconventional lilt that floats and ripples along the top of the melody. She’s a ghost calling you deeper into a gloomy marsh, but with an urgent beauty that makes you powerless to resist. She’s the bright white flower atop a carnivorous plant, the dappled sun reflecting off a lake where there has been a recent drowning.
Supporting this fell and phantomlike grace are some very innovative rhythms. The drums bounce around with the urgency of a haunted Latin dance party, where half your dance partners are vampires. Spanish flourishes tastefully dance around the edges of the songs. You’ll want to twirl with abandon and flip your skirts high.
That’s the up-tempo stuff, but the record has plenty of range, and Vera Sola is equally adept at slow crooners. “Desire Path” is a slowly developing art piece. It is beautiful and enchanting but, this being Vera Sola’s world, the lyrics are about gaslighting and control, and the dark side of ill-considered love.
Through it all you the get the impression that Vera Sola is wise beyond her years. The songs are innovative yes, particularly with the syncopation, but they are also surprisingly traditional. These are crooners that would fit right into a 1920s speakeasy or a 1940s lounge that has somehow survived the war.
Speaking of war, one of the records best tracks is “Instrument of War,” an apocalyptic anthem of vengeance and bloody intent. The song opens with…
“Make me an
instrument of war
Lord pack me my pistol bring me my sword
Load me up with landmines
Bury me in concubines
Take me downtown where the bullets are”
…and it just gets deliciously
darker from there.
On my first listen the record came off a bit affected, with that cutesy curl in the vocals I often don’t like, but the more I listened the more I realized the creative choices being made with her phrasing and singing style were a feature, not a bug. Without that odd lilt and otherworldly quality the album would lose its oddness, which is a key part of what makes it so good.
There were six years between Vera Sola’s first record and this one and I hope I don’t have to wait that long for number three, because whatever the hell you call this kind of music, I want more of it.
Best tracks: Bad Idea, The Line, Desire Path, Waiting Bird House, Blood Bond, Instrument of War
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