- Blending spoken word, ambient and lowercase pop, the French artist shows why less is more.
- Even with the sparest of elements, Vanessa Bedoret approaches every song as a large-scale production. On "1/2," the stirring first single from the London-based act's debut LP Eyes, she establishes humdrum scenery: the crumpling of a bag, the rattling of coins. Suddenly, immense industrial pulses arrive. There's no catharsis, though. Bedoret never builds her songs up to an easy climax—instead, she shrouds her contemplative lyrics in soft atmospheres. When her voice finally emerges, it traces the lower boundary of her register before climbing higher. As the half-formed beat transforms into a rattling groove, she doesn't let it become a full-on dance track. "1/2" is a song about navigating who you are, and she ensures its sonic identity remains in flux.
So much of Eyes is about this unwieldy grappling with selfhood. Bedoret reflects on past behaviors across "Choice," singing about the way she's let her desire for acceptance dictate a life of carelessness. Her operatic voice arcs and flits, eventually soaring above the production. There are string arrangements that highlight her distraught state, and a beat that reverberates in the ether. Nothing truly settles down: both she and the instrumentation are in search of something concrete.
Listening to Eyes can feel like peeling back distant, harrowing memories. When Bedoret shares her stories, her performance is vigorous, but also detached. That can read as numbness or as the compartmentalisation needed to avoid spiralling. On "Ballad," she lets muted guitar melodies act as the foundation for her hushed vocals. The song details the decision to mask pain to avoid inconveniencing others, and her quietness subtly conveys her unspoken hurt. Bedoret's singing is especially diaphanous—she sounds like a wandering spirit revisiting her past, unsure of who she is today.
Eyes is at its best when the landscapes match Bedoret's ideas. On "Transition," the only wordless track, there's tension in the beat's quick reverberations, but also in the flickering synths and screeching violin glissandos. After multiple tracks of distraught ruminations, it's clear that she doesn't need to sing to convey her frazzled state of mind. A song like "Pas," however, feels too on the nose. It aims to capture the harrowing effects of climate change, using manipulated field recording and fractured electronics to convey that literally. "Pas" is hellbent on making its ideas unavoidable, it's like an overwrought soundtrack for a banal documentary.
Bedoret speaks volumes whenever she holds back. "Eternal" is about people who long for fame, and if she had sung its lyrics ("The shine you long for isn't worth dying for") in a flashier manner, it could've come off corny. But "Eternal" ends with a simple gesture: the unceremonious squirming of electronics. The title track, for example, displays her chops as a violinist, understanding how a melody can linger in the air to shape the way a space feels. Her voice then fleshes out its sombre mood, but soon disappears to let the dramatics play out. Eyes is tasteful when it's comfortable in its minimalist palette, and when Bedoret understands the weight of any given note.
Tracklist01. Choice
02. Ballad
03. 1/2
04. Transition
05. Eyes
06. Pas
07. Eternal