by David Wilikofsky
We last heard from Ashley Paul earlier this year. Her album Window Flower, recorded at the beginning of quarantine, captured the energy of those early days. Together with her partner Ben and daughter Cora, she created avant-songs that oscillated between anxiety, joy and exhaustion. Her latest dispatch, Ray, arrives via Slip this week. Also recorded during lockdown, it feels like a natural progression from Window Flower; where that album captured the energy of abrupt changes accompanying the onset of the pandemic, Ray sees the novelty fade away. What is left is more melancholy and introspective, both an elegy to what we’ve lost and a celebration of the joys that remain.
Paul’s writing is spare. Some tracks are very concrete; “Little Butterfly”, for example, entreats the titular insect to visit Paul’s garden and keep her company. Others use poetic fragments to explore more abstract feelings. “Lost Memories” explores how quarantine has affected our sense of time, with days, months and years blurring together. “Choices”, the seven minute long centerpiece, deals with the psychological toll of quarantine in the album’s most explicit terms. Over a gentle guitar line, Paul sings “I’m stuck here / I’m shut here / No change here / I’m fading“. The instrumentals on the track often sound on the brink of collapse, echoing the despondence of the lyrics.
It’s not all doom and gloom though. Evocatively titled instrumental tracks like “Garden Walk” and “Star Over Sand” are filled with emotive, playful woodwind squawks. “Light Inside My Skin” is a declaration of unconditional love; Paul sings “There’s a light inside my skin that beats the sun / for only you“. There’s a pure joy to these compositions that provides a reprieve from the heaviness of other tracks. These moments of levity are important; while it’s completely natural to mourn what we’ve lost, we also need to find pleasure in our current situation to keep moving forward. The album perfectly reflect this dichotomy, exploring both the sense of joy and loss in our current moment. With Ray, Paul has once again effortlessly captured the zeitgeist of this strange year.