FEATURE:
Vinyl Corner
Grimes – Visions
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RELEASED back in 2012…
PHOTO CREDIT: Elliott Morgan
I have been re-exploring Grimes’ third studio album, Visions. I have always loved Grimes’ music. I don’t think I have put her in Vinyl Corner. Real name Claire Boucher, she recorded the album entirely on Apple's GarageBand software in her apartment over a three-week period. That kind of recording method might be more common now, but it was fairly rare in 2012. I like how lo-tech it is and what an impact that has on the album’s overall sound. I would encourage people to buy Visions on vinyl. As I have said before, Genesis and Oblivion are two of my favourite songs from Grimes. Her songwriting throughout the album is amazing. I feel Visions is perfect on vinyl, as it is a very busy and unique album that whose layers and multiple sounds require repeated listens. Before closing things off, I want to bring in a couple of reviews. The A.V. Club wrote the following in their review:
“Claire Boucher works across many media. In addition to making music, the restless producer and mesmeric voice behind Grimes is an artist (she makes her own album covers), a filmmaker (she directs her own music videos), and a dancer (she choreographs them). Her most ambitious project, though, may be herself. Over a rush of ever-stronger records—beginning with two patchy but fascinating 2010 LPs, Geidi Primes and Halfaxa, and continuing with a 2011 split EP with D’Eons that tempered her avant-garde impulses, Darkbloom—she’s molded herself into a bizarro pop star, bridging the chasm between the leftfield home recordings of so many cassette-only releases and the picture-book confections of her idol Mariah Carey. On her 4AD debut, Visions, she continues her march toward accessibility, rendering hazy, quixotic sketches into tangible, hook-heavy electro-pop.
Like all Grimes albums, Visions was tracked alone in Boucher’s bedroom and pieced together on GarageBand, but it’s crafted with such attention to detail that it makes its predecessors feel like test runs. The album’s big dance pieces, “Vowels = Space And Time” and “Be A Body,” are the first Grimes tracks that could play in clubs. The cleaner fidelity and tighter song structures haven’t hampered Boucher’s sense of exploration, though. She still cycles through influences voraciously, using sprightly Korean pop, Cocteau Twins-styled dreamscapes, and Depeche Mode’s nocturnal synths as springboards for ever-weirder explorations. In other hands this lattice of unrelated strains of dance, New Age, bubblegum, and R&B could collapse under the weight of its own busyness—or worse, its own preciousness—but Boucher’s command of mood is so strong, and her ear for melody so selective, that she handily avoids those traps.
Visions is anchored less by Boucher’s voice, a small but versatile falsetto with unexpected range, than by her personality, which grounds even the album’s oddest digressions with sweetness and sensuality. She sings mostly in a cryptic blur of impressions, preferring expressive sighs and squeals over complete thoughts, but the lyrics that are decipherable leave a mark. On “Oblivion,” Boucher pines for the simple comforts of romance, and on the penultimate track “Skin,” she reflects on how physical contact forges emotional bonds. It’s Visions’ longest, saddest song, but it’s a fitting closer for a record that’s so evocatively textured it’s practically a tactile experience”.
I am going to wrap this up in a bit. There is another review that I want to highlight. AllMusic had some interesting perspectives on one of the best albums of the 2010s:
“On Visions, Claire Boucher turns the unmistakable sound she forged on Geidi Primes and Halfaxa, where songs hovered in space one moment and hit the dancefloor in the next, into a blueprint for forward-thinking pop in the 2010s. Though her wispy vocals and four-on-the-floor beats still define her third album, she adds more elements, more ambition, and frequently, more fun to her music; on sparkly tracks like "Eight," where she's shadowed by robotic backing vocals, she sounds like an alien princess. The way she combines and reimagines familiar sounds -- dream pop, synth pop, R&B, and house are just a few of the styles she touches on -- often dazzles. "Genesis" begins with what sounds like the ethereal atmospheres of old-school sounds of her label 4AD before coalescing into irresistibly bouncy pop. Boucher performs a similar trick on the brilliant "Oblivion," which sets lyrics inspired by a sexual assault to deceptively radiant synth pop buoyed by an insistent, instantly recognizable bass line. While Visions' songs are still largely free from obvious structures -- "Symphonia IX (My Wait Is U)" segues into a minor-key passage like a dream turning dark -- Boucher has learned the values of space and control, as the intricate layers within "Infinite Love Without Fulfillment" and "Visiting Statue" attest.
And though "Know the Way" and "Skin" spotlight Grimes' flair for ethereal sensuality, Visions' most kinetic songs are the most distinctive, and allow her to draw on many different influences and sounds. "Be a Body" boasts a surprisingly funky bass line; on "Circumambient," the song's shadowy R&B leanings are only heightened when Boucher busts out a super-soprano trill that would do Syreeta or Minnie Riperton proud. When she borrows from '80s pop, it never feels slavish, even when she uses frosty Casios on "Vowels = Space and Time" or lets "Colour of Moonlight (Antiochus)" ride on a beat that sounds borrowed from "When Doves Cry." Instead, these retro winks end up bringing out the darkly rhapsodic, kinetic heart of Boucher's music as much as the Asian-tinged melodies, harps, and operatic samples she uses elsewhere. Though little sounded like it when it was released, the impact of Visions' futuristic fantasies was felt, and heard, for years to come”.
It is definitely worth investing some time and money on Grimes’ Visions. The vinyl copy is one that you will want to grab hold of. Last year’s Miss Anthropocene – her fifth studio album – is among her very best. I know we will get much more innovative and sense-altering music from the amazing Grimes. Visions is the Canadian artist…
AT her very best.