by David Wilikofsky
Renata Zeiguer was a mainstay of the Brooklyn DIY scene for years, recording with local underground heroes like Landlady, Ava Luna and Cassandra Jenkins; her debut album, 2018’s Old Ghost, featured contributions from some of these friends. Between that album and its followup, Picnic In The Dark, Zeiguer left her lifelong hometown of New York City behind, decamping upstate to the Catskills. Uprooting her life and finding a new rhythm in the country deeply informs her new album; it’s a set of songs that bears the marks of these shifting physical and psychic landscapes, simultaneously serving as an excavation her past and celebration of her present.
I’m often hesitant to read too deeply into the narratives that come packaged with albums, but Zeiguer’s move clearly looms large over her latest batch of songs. Squalls of dissonance that encroached on her previous work are largely gone, replaced with a pastoral tranquility in which you can’t help but hear her new surroundings. Imagery like “picnics in the dark” and “sundown forests” do this most literally, but each note feels imprinted by the landscape. The twinkling chimes on “Avalanche” bring to mind fireflies flickering in the twilight, and the swirling, light psychedelia of “Eloise” feels as expansive as the night sky. It’s music that perfectly captures the natural grandeur that can be found outside the confines of the city.
Though her new physical world looms large over the album, psychic landscapes are just as important. Zeiguer has described her move as an opportunity to “uproot the hold of past life-experiences” through living in a new environment, and on Picnic In The Dark the sounds of her present life in upstate New York swirl with those of her past. The album’s backbone is indie pop through and through, but Zeiguer plays with an expansive sonic palette. Tracks like “Mark the Date” and “Primavera” play with childhood memories of bossa nova, while elsewhere she flirts with everything from orchestral grandeur to psychedelia. The lyrics live in a similar liminal space, excavating Zeiguer’s past through fragmented memories and surreal, magical realist imagery.
It’s hard to understate the dream-like hold this album will get on you; it’s at once lush and strange, each song an intricately rendered house of mirrors. It’s this attention to detail that has kept me coming back for the past few weeks, each listen illuminating a new corner of Zeiguer’s vividly etched universe.