Orenda Fink and Maria Taylor are Azure Ray. On Hold on Love, the ladies’ third full-length album, Azure Ray lets out an eloquent, reverberating, satisfying breath.
As a departure from 2001’s self-titled debut and 2002’s Burn & Shiver (both released on WARM Records), as well as 2002’s November EP on Saddle Creek, Hold on Love was built on a bold approach — taking the ethereal aspects of Azure Ray’s past work and mixing them with a more upbeat and enlivened technique. Still so visceral and intimate you can hear lips pulling apart and piano hammers striking, Hold on Love travels the aurally deeper road with layer upon layer of all-encompassing sound. And where love and loss dripped from each word on past albums, Hold on Love finds hope to round out their message.
Orenda and Maria arrived in Omaha via Athens, Georgia. True southerners at heart, their music can’t help but sway and smolder like neo-American gothic balladry.
Longtime producer Eric Bachmann (of Archers of Loaf and Crooked Fingers) was a key collaborator on the way to Azure Ray’s newfound breadth. Building three-dimensional soundscapes around the nucleus of each song, Bachmann deftly enhances the soulful harmony and subtlety at Azure Ray’s core. Bachmann also arranged the warm, splendorous strings that cascade across the album.
Making it a combination of efforts, the production was assisted by Andy LeMaster and Mike Mogis. LeMaster, whom Orenda and Maria record with as one half of Now It’s Overhead, engineered and mixed Hold on Love along with the help of Presto!'s own Mike Mogis (producer for Bright Eyes, Cursive, The Faint). Hold on Love also features drum programming from The Faint’s Clark Baechle on “The Devil’s Feet” and “We Are Mice.”
The showering strings that first wash over us with force and urgency on “New Resolution” continue their gentle deluge on the “Drinks We Drank Last Night,” as Hold on Love explores the ups and downs of the human condition. From the melancholic sentiment of “Look to Me,” (a nuanced lament on the perpetuation of a bad situation) to the waltzing “Sea of Doubts” (asks am I living the life I should be living?) the record let’s you know it’s okay to move on in its own, eerie way.
Orenda and Maria toured with Moby, and collaborated on “The Great Escape” off Moby’s 18. |
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