SeaLight – Dead Letters

SeaLight – Dead Letters
http://sealight.fr/

Acoustic folk, shoegaze

Label – Commission 45
http://commission45.org/

01 Dead Letters
02 White Walk
03 When the Rain Starts
04 The Moon
05 La Nieve

Sandra Rossini, Dave Olliffe and Marc-Aurele Ngo Xuan are the trio who turn on the Sealight, on their debut E.P “Dead Letters” on the label Commission 45. Softly and gracefully blending the soothing aspect of ethereal music with a more bitter, maybe even painful aspect of folk music, this album keeps itself safe from falling into traps of clichés and remains a personal, intimate album with interesting insights, instead of following a recipe for an ethereal band with a female singer. Sealight’s dreaminess is enchanting, even though I would personally go deeper into that domain. I keep reminding myself that this is not my album and that Dead Letters is enjoyable even without my suggestions.

But I do have one more suggestion. Personally I do not find myself listening to much music of this genre. However, I do know that the music on this album is really nice, and the singing is even better. Juggling this album between an extreme noise album and an insane, psychedelic folk album of other artists who submitted their music for reviews, I really think SeaLight can aim for a much wider audience, and I hope they do so. Their dreamy strings can remind most of us sweet memories from the Cocteau twins, but they actually do more than reminding. They also introduce their own characteristics, and I can’t see why this album can’t play in radio stations by people who don’t even know that shoegaze is, except maybe from a southpark episode.

“Dead Letters” is a short E.P, just lengthy enough to introduce the band, hit those who like this music in the guts hard enough to want more from SeaLight, while not getting lost within themselves in the eyes of people who are not so fond of these sounds. My favorite highlight is the song “White walk”, which goes along the guidelines of this album, yet at the end it surprises with piercing, drones that melts into the atmosphere of the song in a perfect, almost alchemical manner. It might be a good album for the winter…all I have to do is wait for the rain to start.