FEATURE: Spotlight: Charlotte Day Wilson

FEATURE:

Spotlight

Charlotte Day Wilson

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ONE of the best albums…

of the year has come from the magnificent Charlotte Day Wilson. Cyan Blue came out in May and is an album that you need to add to your collection. I have been following her for a while now. Although she has been making music for a long time, many might know her as a collaborator rather than a solo artist. Her second studio album announces her as a major talent who you need to watch out for. I would urge people to pick up Cyan Blue. This is what Rough Trade say:

“Toronto-born-and-raised singer, songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Charlotte Day Wilson announces her highly-anticipated sophomore album Cyan Blue via Stone Woman Music / XL Recordings. Cyan Blue finds Wilson crafting a smoothly woven cyan tapestry of her eternal influences; thumping gospel piano, warm soul basslines, atmospheric electronics, and penetrating R&B melodies. Yet, it possesses a sense of vastness that rings in a new era for Wilson, one in which she’s embracing collaboration and newfound creative openness tinged with wistfulness and yearning and a reflection on youthful innocence. “I want to look through the unjaded eyes of my younger self again,” Wilson explains of making Cyan Blue. “Before there wasn’t as much baggage, before so much life was lived. But I also wish that my younger self could see where I am now. It would be nice to be able to impart some of the wisdom and clarity that I have now onto her.”

Working with producers like Leon Thomas (SZA, Ariana Grande, Post Malone), and Jack Rochon (H.E.R, Daniel Caesar), Cyan Blue demonstrates Wilson’s sonic expertise while also showcasing the next evolution of her time-bending songwriting. Through 13 hypnotizing tracks, she continues to use music as a vessel for unpacking relationships, which in turn allows her to meet and understand herself in life-spanning, panoramic focus. But, on Cyan Blue, she challenged herself to kick her perfectionist tendencies. “Before, I was extremely intentional about creating music with a strong foundation, a bed of artistic integrity,” Wilson reflects. “But that was a bit stifling, like, ‘Let me just make a great piece of art that will stand the test of time, no pressure.’ Now, I think I'm getting out of this frozen state of needing everything to be perfect. I'm more interested in capturing feelings in the moment as they happen and leaving them in that moment.”

While this is only her second album, Wilson’s influence in music has made a major mainstream impact. Wilson broke out in 2016 with her critically acclaimed EP, CDW, followed by 2018’s Stone Woman and made her debut studio album an official coming out moment in 2021 with the critically acclaimed, self-released Alpha. Over the past decade, she’s been sampled by Drake, John Mayer, and James Blake, while Patti Smith has recently praised and covered Wilson’s 2016 breakout single “Work.” Additionally, she’s collaborated with artists like Kaytranada, BADBADNOTGOOD, and SG Lewis, demonstrating that there’s no sound Wilson can’t adapt to and sprinkle her cyan-colored magic over”.

Cyan Blue is a beautiful and instantly memorable album. Highlighting the fact Charlotte Day Wilson is a phenomenal songwriter. One of these artists that you need to hear. I have a few interviews that are worth sourcing. The first, from Sniffers, takes us inside a remarkable album:

“In Laurel Canyon, alongside her co-producer Jack Rochon, Charlotte Day Wilson crafted her sophomore album ‘Cyan Blue’; a graceful exploration of self through past-reflections and future desires.

While Wilson is known to have self-produced the majority of her previous projects,—from her 2016 EP ‘CDW’, and 2018 EP ‘Stone Woman’, to her 2021 debut album ‘Alpha’—‘Cyan Blue’ is a testament to creative easement achieved through collaboration.

For 'Cyan Blue,' Wilson prioritized enjoying her creative process over the pressure of producing a perfect final product. During recording sessions, she would drive to Ranson’s house each day before heading to the studio together. She shares, “those short drives were as important to us as working on the music, to listen to references while taking moments to check in on each other.” After completing ‘Cyan Blue’, Wilson stated that Rochon allowed her to feel “completely free and weird and able to make mistakes”, stressing to us the importance of having Rochon’s name “loud and clear since he was seminal to the creation of ‘Cyan Blue’.”

The creative freedom that Rochon granted Wilson doesn’t fall on deaf ears, rather their collaborative venture stands as Wilson’s most vulnerable and thought provoking feat to date. Transversing time over 13 life-chronicling tracks, ‘Cyan Blue’’s emotional resonance provides an earnest vantage point into Wilson’s desire for a clear understanding of self.

Hi Charlotte, it’s nice to meet you. Congrats on the new project.

Hello, thank you so much!

I wanted to start off by chatting about the title track ‘Cyan Blue’. You say a reflective line to your younger self; “I wish I could see through your eyes one more time”, can you expand on this wishful thought?

In general I’m on a perpetual journey of trying to connect with my inner child. I feel the most connected with myself when I feel close to the person I was when I was a child. I believe at our core we’re always those people, that we are who we are from a very young age.

Something I’ve always been aware of is my grief towards the fact that we can’t truly feel feelings again, and while we may remember the events that emotionally moved us, or recall what hurt us, or why we felt love, we don’t actually remember how those feelings felt as we lived them. As a deeply emotional person, I’ve enjoyed talking to my younger self about what those experiences felt like for me.

Looking into the future, your track “New Day” revolves around your desire to be a mother. Can you tell us about the personal narrative you shaped within the lyrics?

I wrote ‘New Day’ as I was confronting the heavy feelings I encounter when I think about being a mother in a lesbian relationship, specifically about how only one mother can be genetically tied to the child. This reality hurts sometimes, and while it’s not something I’ve necessarily spoken openly about, I hope that in putting these thoughts into a song that other people in Queer relationships who are experiencing these same feelings feel seen and heard.

I read in a past interview of yours that at the tail end of making ‘Alpha’ you began to deep dive into Joni Mitchell’s ‘Blue’; Did Joni’s song writing inform your storytelling approach for ‘Cyan Blue’?

Honestly, at large, not really. While that is a seminal album, and though I was working in Laurel Canyon, and she was a big Laurel Canyon girl, I was just using ‘blue’ as a lens to connect to the world around me.

What role did Laurel Canyon play as a backdrop to the creation of your album?

What was important for me in creating this album was to have fun with my friend and collaborator, I wanted to enjoy the process more than anything else. I didn't really care how it ended up, at the end it was just about the process and really enjoying it. Everyday in Laurel Canyon I would pick Jack Rochon up from his house and drive him to the studio, those short drives were as important to us as working on the music, to listen to references while taking moments to check in on each other”.

There are a couple of other interviews and a review that I am keen to get to. ELLE talked to Charlotte Day Wilson about her experiences from adolescence that she brings into Cyan Blue. I am fascinated by album titles that mention colours. How they have an emotional attachment. A variegated palette of albums where the titular colour holds a special significance for the artist. As Day Wilson says in the interview: “I was experiencing some sort of synesthesia with a color between green and blue”:

“Since your debut album ALPHA came out in 2021, what’s changed?

A big thing that’s changed is that things aren’t shut down anymore. My last album came out during the pandemic and I was working on it for the majority of the pandemic. It was a pretty isolating experience. It was hard to feel connected to everyone around when we were all so alone. My process with that album creatively was very insular and very isolating. I was just by myself playing everything and writing everything. Now, I’m coming out of that.

How do you feel about that album now that you’re a few years removed from it?

I love it more than I did when it came out. At the time, I still felt those perfectionist things like wanting to keep tinkering with it and not feeling sure if things were done. Now that time has passed, I think it’s aged well, for me at least.

What were you interested in exploring with Cyan Blue?

Connection. I think it’s one of the most human pursuits that we have as people. We want to connect with other folks, whether it’s people in our community, our neighbors, our partners, our friends, our parents. We want to find those moments.

Did the album title come before the songs?

No, it was a bit about halfway through that I started to think that maybe that could be the title. The other thing with the title is that my eyes are green and blue. On the title track “Cyan Blue,” I talk about how I wish I could see through my younger eyes. That’s a theme that I tend to lean towards a lot, talking to my younger self or different versions of myself. Whether it’s past, present, or future, it’s something that I find really interesting in music. So I follow those leads. Music is a vessel for me to talk to my younger self. It’s healing.

The ninth track on the album is a cover of “Over the Rainbow” from The Wizard of Oz. Was that another way you were calling back to your childhood?

[Laughs] I was lying in bed one night and I started singing “Over the Rainbow” to myself while I was in that weird liminal space between being asleep and being awake. And I was just laughing because I was changing the lyrics and turning it into a song about when a girl is over her gay phase. It was like, “Oh, she’s over the rainbow now.” So then I rewrote a bunch of lyrics to it and I recorded it like that, but we couldn’t get that cleared. So then I had to do a straight cover. In the end, I did find a lot of amazing metaphors that tied in with the rest of the album and it’s just such a beautiful song and I love the arrangement that my friend Jack [Rochon, her co-producer] and I did for it.

I wish they had cleared your original idea.

I think I’ll perform it on stage and people can hear the harshness of what the lyrics were. I think in the end it was a blessing in disguise that I wasn’t allowed to say what I was saying.

PHOTO CREDIT: Matthew Tammaro

That’s a good incentive to catch you on tour.

[Laughs] Yeah.

I also really like the song “New Day” where you sing about motherhood. What’s the story behind that one?

That’s definitely the most deeply personal song on the record. It’s about something that myself and my community and my partner talk about, but I don’t think I’ve heard people write about it before. The song is about the grief and pain that you go through as a queer person in a queer relationship when you’re thinking about having children and how only one parent can be genetically tied to that child. So I’ve always thought about how that would feel. It’s a song about how I want the child and even if she doesn’t have my face, she’ll have my name. So that’s what it’s about. I just want a new day, a new Charlotte Day.

Do you ever feel nervous about being vulnerable in your music, especially in this internet era where things get misconstrued so easily?

I do, but that’s what art is. It’s pure expression. And I know that if it’s something that’s really vulnerable, then other people have felt it too and they probably have been scared to say it or haven’t had an arena to commiserate with other people about it. The thing that I get more scared about is putting out songs that I’m not 100 percent sure are completely true to me.

Did you listen to any music while making the album?

No, I tend to not listen to music when I’m working on my projects because I feel like I absorb too much and I don’t ever want to be too heavily influenced by something. Even if I listen to a song on the way to the studio when I’m in that creative state, there’s a chance that I might end up being like, “Oh, I wanna make something like this.”

I immediately thought of Joni Mitchell’s album Blue, since the title is similar.

That was an influence. I was staying in Laurel Canyon and I was in this blue phase and obviously that album is a hugely influential album for me. But, I don’t know if I would... it’s tough. I feel like some of my heroes have been disappointing me recently. I just found out that she’s done blackface and has an album [Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter] where she’s in blackface. It’s crazy that a lot of people don’t know about that. And she’s never said anything publicly about that or apologized. The same goes for Patti Smith who’s covered my song “Work.” I can’t rock with her anymore because she has a song [“Rock N Roll N*****”] that she [released in the seventies], but she’s continued to perform it up until 2019 and has never apologized for it. It’s tough when you have these people who are hugely influential to you, but can’t rock with anymore. I was so touched that she was covering my song, but disappointed to find those things out.

Wow, I didn’t know that.

It’s fucked up. Everyone should just learn how to take responsibility for their weird fucking actions that they took in the sixties and seventies and somehow didn’t understand that that was wrong. And if you don’t understand that it was wrong at this point, then something’s really wrong with you. And if you can’t say sorry and know that you should apologize, then you’re not cool in my books.

Are you a self-taught producer?

Mostly. But I have had some really important sessions with people and some great mentors who have given me the time of day to let me ask questions about every little thing that they’re doing. But YouTube also taught me a lot.

With this new album, what did you want to achieve artistically?

What I set out to do with this body of work was to challenge my perfectionism and to just capture a moment in time and not obsess over any of the details of how this work was being put together. That was deeply in contrast to my process before. So I definitely achieved that with the help of my co-producer Jack. And I’m super proud of that. I feel like I’ve really grown because of this experience”.

The final interview is from FADER. I know this is a long feature already. It is important in exploring and properly spotlighting such a magnificent artist. With two remarkable albums under her belt (her debut, ALPHA, came out in 2021), there will be many more eyes on Charlotte Day Wilson. A fantastic artist who I hope comes to the U.K. to play at some point. At the moment she is touring North America. I would love to see and feel Cyan Blue come to life on the stage:

“The other side of the album is wishing you could relive your youth with the knowledge of adulthood. What kind of wisdom would you pass on to the teenage Charlotte?

First and foremost, be yourself. I think that's the hardest question that teens and young adults are faced with, "Who am I?" Early on in my music career, there were a lot of people encouraging me to just stay true to myself. But I didn't quite know who I was at that point, maybe because of all the things that distract and bring us further from our core childhood selves.

I would also say something like, "You will find who you are and you will not be alone and feeling confused as to why you can't see yourself in anyone around you. You'll find love, first of all, and second of all, a community."

Was there anything you wanted to capture with Cyan Blue that maybe you didn't or couldn't on Alpha?

I wanted to work in a way that was different and a little bit more uninhibited than how Alpha came together. Jack fosters a very safe space in the studio and it just felt like we were pushing each other out of our comfort zones. We both have slightly perfectionist tendencies, and so we were pushing each other to just follow our intuitions, not editing any instincts musically or creatively. It was fun to kind of have a partner in crime for that.

In what ways would he push you?

He would be honest with me when he thought something was not up to par. That liberated me. He was totally open about just saying, ‘That's not quite it. Just keep going.’

“Forever” samples The Foundations's "Baby Now That I've Found You." What was it about that song that made you want to sample it?

There's this Alison Krauss cover of that song, a super beautiful country version, that my dad used to play growing up all the time. I just sat down at the piano one day and was like, "Let me learn this song, it's so pretty." I make samples all the time and that ended up being one of them.

Something that I was dealing with when I was working on the album, and it's kind of heady and existential, was what you feel when you meet someone who you actually feel like you could spend the rest of your life with. It's the most beautiful feeling but you also have to confront your own mortality when you think about forever with someone, because forever is not infinite.

That's something that I was working through a lot on this project. That feeling of, "Wow, I might have met the person that I want to spend the rest of my life with, but that's not enough time with them."

“New Day” is written about having children in a queer relationship. I’m not sure I have heard anyone sing from the angle you take on that song before. Was that partly why you wrote it?

I think that song is my favorite one on the record, and also the most personal and vulnerable. It's something that I've thought about a lot, and that folks in my community have thought a lot about.
Watching people around me have children, and how so much of the experience of meeting two people's child, in our culture, we're so obsessed with being like, "He has your eyes and your nose." While I love doing that too with the folks in my life there was always a little bit of sadness attached to those moments for me, because I’d be thinking about the fact that that'll never happen for me.

Those were some big feelings that I needed to write about. I knew after I had written it that I also hadn't heard anything like that. It felt important to include on the record. I think in some ways, the song feels more like a celebration of coming to terms with the fact that any child that I raise will be my child no matter what.

Someone I wanted to talk about outside of the album is Patti Smith, who is a big fan of yours and has covered your song “Work” live for a few years now. That must have been surreal for you?

It was really moving at first. I read Just Kids at a pretty formative time of my life and it did inspire me to pursue a creative lifestyle in a lot of ways. Hearing her cover “Work” was one of those big kind of "pinch-me" moments, too. Since then, however, I've been made aware that she has a song from the sixties called “Rock and Roll N Word.”

She's never commented on it or apologized for it so I really don't rock with her anymore. I think that it's disgusting that she has such a violent song in the first place, and that she thought she had the authority to use a word like that and to subvert it in her own way.

I sent her a DM telling her, "I think it's a disgusting song, and I think that you should really think about apologizing.” It's obviously extremely disappointing and really sad to see. She never responded but I really think that she should be ashamed of herself.

Someone you have been working with is Nelly Furtado. What can you say about those sessions?

We've written a couple of things together. It’s an amazing experience to work with someone like her. She's just such a legend and it was really an honor to work with her. We text all the time, and she sends me music that she thinks I'll like. It's always very folky. It's really sweet”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Emily Lipson

There is another interview I am including prior to ending with a review. CLASH. There are a lot of great insights and answers. I am particularly interested in what she says about the Toronto scene. I don’t think that this area is covered enough when it comes to musical excellence. Toronto has always produced incredible artists. I can imagine it is boiling over with so many unique and fascinating musicians:

“Since your songs have always carried an emotional weight to them, would you agree that the relationships we find ourselves in are meant to build character and define who we’re meant to be in the future?

Oh yeah, I definitely agree. Not to be corny, but everything happens for a reason and no matter what, we are conscious of what we take away from any given relationship. Like I think it’s all for character building and I don’t know – I’m a believer of destiny to be honest and I think whether it’s a way of coping with the things that come our way or not, I believe that everything happens for a reason. No regrets ever in this life is basically how I try to live.

What initially shaped that perspective for you?

I guess just coming to a place now where I feel very in control of my emotional state. I feel like I’m in a place of acceptance and knowing that no matter what happens, basically, I’ll always be okay. I’m very blessed to have a very loving family and group of close friends, and I think having that foundation of love allows me to kind of go through the external experiences of my life and know that they are all kind of like… nothing will rock me at this point, basically, you know?

How important is it to establish those relationships as you get older?

Yeah, big time. I really do think friends and family are important. To me, my loved ones are the people who hold it down for me and on any given day – no matter what happens with work or anything else – if you have your people in your corner, you’re good.

In terms of the production on your second album ‘Cyan Blue’, what was it like working with Jack Rochon compared to your initial and later recording sessions for ‘Alpha’?

It was a completely different experience for me which was really fun. It’s fun to try something new at this stage in my career. My whole thesis for this new project wasn’t necessarily any sort of concept in terms of the content and lyrics, but my thesis was just I want to have fun making it. Working on ‘Alpha’ and ‘Stone Woman’, I love that music and I’m proud of it but it wasn’t always fun to work on because I spent so much time alone laboring over the granular details of the work.

I learned a lot in that process and I’m really glad that I did it because now I feel like as a producer, technically I can kind of do whatever. Any vision I have I can generally achieve production-wise on my own. But it’s just time-consuming and it can be lonely, and I was working on ‘Alpha’ during the pandemic so that was a lot of alone time already. Working with someone else – Jack specifically because I love him so much, he’s such an amazing human, an amazing collaborator, amazing musician, producer, everything. It not only accelerated the recording process, but it also made it way more fun. Just like sharing that experience with someone felt really comforting for me.

What influenced you to move on from your perfectionist tendencies? And are you still harsh on yourself when it comes to your creative intuition?

I think I have a standard that I hold myself to that is probably, generally, pretty harsh at times. But I think what motivated me to switch my process up was that I didn’t know if I was having fun, and with this project, conceptually to a certain extent and in my life and my approach with everything, I’m trying to connect with my inner child. I think we are who we are from a very young age and the further we stray from that inner child, for me personally, I feel disconnected from myself. And something that I always loved doing as a child and even as a teenager and a young adult before I really had an established career in music, was entering into a flow state with music – just having a state and feeling of play and deep imagination. And also collaboration, having fun with friends.

That’s how most people get into music because it’s a fun thing to do with friends, and the further I got away from that, I felt disconnected from myself and as a result, I think music suffers when you’re not having fun making it. I was just trying to get back to a place of joy in the process and I definitely achieved that so for me I hope that the album does well, of course, but I also just know that I had a great time making it and it’s a success in my eyes because it was a joy to make.

PHOTO CREDIT: Emily Lipson

With Toronto having its own abundance of creativity and community, was it a challenge at all to write an album without having that familiar collaborative environment in your orbit?

I mean Jack is such a familiar Toronto person for me that I think that’s what grounded me. I don’t think I could have done it with someone who I wasn’t as familiar with. I think Toronto comes with me everywhere I go and another nice thing about the entire Toronto music community is that we always find each other in other cities too. I would also say that my Toronto music community no longer really connects in Toronto, we connect elsewhere. I don’t know what that says but I think maybe people have a similar thing with me where it’s helpful to leave the city and just leave the routine of home to tap into a 24/7 creative headspace.

What’s the inspiration behind the song ‘Do U Still’?

Well, funnily enough, you know how I’m talking about this state of play? That song came about basically as a joke. Jack and I were done working for the day and I think that maybe I was taking longer to pack up than Jack was so he was ready to leave. I was just putzing around the studio, packing up or something, and he sat down at the piano and started playing a couple chords and I just started it as a joke, singing but also kind of like screaming those lyrics [laughs]. I don’t know. They just kind of came out of me, you know? I’m not going to say exactly what they’re inspired by but it did come as a joke, like “Do you still love me?”. Just as a joke, you know? And then he was just laughing and I was like “Honestly, I kind of feel like maybe that’s a song”. Again, the creative process is so different every time and that one felt very different. As much as it’s about hoping that someone still loves you, it’s a lighthearted tune that started in a very lighthearted manner.

With “I Don’t Love You” being a small reminder that leaving love can be just as inspiring as finding it, is it difficult at all to write about lost loves and the heartache that can come with failed relationships? Or is it just a part of the process of finding peace in yourself?

I don’t find it difficult to write about – I think it’s super cathartic to write about. But releasing it is sometimes a different story. Because usually, you know, there’s some person that it’s inspired by and I do believe that in order for a grieving process to be complete, you usually do have to cut off communication and when I have this platform as a songwriter to put out my music, it’s almost as though there’s still a conversation, you know? It’s a bit of an odd privilege but also a responsibility that you have to tell a story from your perspective and I just hope sometimes that people know that I’m only singing from my perspective and that there’s always an element of storytelling and it’s not 100% rooted in whatever is factually going on in my life. I squint at reality all the time just to follow wherever the path of least resistance is taking me in the songwriting process.

For me, it’s one of those things where I might think that I have healed from something but then I start writing a song and these lyrics flow out of me, and my subconscious is banging on the door of my vessel to tell me that I still need to process a couple of things. I think it’s cool to be kind of exposed to things within your subconscious that you maybe thought were all well and good and you clearly have to get out somehow.

One interesting line from the single ‘I Don’t Love You’ is the lyric: “It’s more peaceful being heartbroken than crying every night for you”. When did you come to terms with that realization? And how has it changed your perspective on love and relationships?

That’s a good question. I think we all have different understandings of what love is and I have, in many phases of my life, thought that love is just about perseverance no matter what and loyalty no matter what, and to acknowledge that love is just actually letting someone be their full self and encouraging their own kind of growth as a person… I don’t know. I feel like that’s what real love is to me and while being heartbroken is an awful feeling, I do think that finding peace within yourself can be cathartic. I don’t know. Being stuck in something negative is way worse. I don’t know… I don’t have a good answer for that [laughs].

While it’s equally beautiful and complicated, do you still have an obsession with love?

I do, of course, because I believe that love is the meaning of life. Simply put. I don’t really care if it sounds cliche, but I live my life with a pretty strong acceptance and understanding that without love, there isn’t a purpose to any of this. And ‘love’ extends to platonic relationships, friendships, romantic relationships, and familial relationships, and to love well and be loved well is the thing that makes me feel the most complete as a person and the most at peace and at ease. It makes me feel like I can enjoy every day knowing that I’m surrounded by love. So yeah, I would say that hell yeah I’m still obsessed with love [laughs].

What wisdom do you hope to impart on others with ‘Cyan Blue’? And is there a lesson or realization that you hope listeners can take with them into the summer months?

The wisdom and the message that I hope people can come away with in terms of this project – they might not know it if they don’t read the interviews – but really, what I want people to know is that this shit has to be fun. You gotta’ have fun making it and if it feels like you’re fighting with the music, then there’s no point in doing it. Find whatever circumstances it is that you need to have a Tabula Rasa brain going into each session in order to enter into a good headspace and just enjoy the process. Because life is short and just wishing away time or ‘stressing away’ time is selling ourselves short of the joy of the beautiful thing that is making music and making art. Whatever your rituals are with listening to the album in a car, number one is definitely turn it up loud”.

There are a selection of really positive reviews for Cyan Blue. I want to highlight one from Spill Magazine. They had some interesting takes on Charlotte Day Wilson’s second studio album. If you have not heard it then I would recommend you take a listen. It is truly one of the best of this year:

“With the release of her second full-length album, Charlotte Day Wilson provides a captivating musical production, one that is as engaging as it is sonically mesmerizing. Fans of the Toronto native have been eagerly awaiting the follow-up to her 2021 release Alpha, and thankfully she rewarded such patience with Cyan Blue, an album very much worth the wait. Packed with a spectacular range of entrancing melodies and a rather peachy rhythmic groove, this new release marks a significant sonic achievement.

Nothing sparks a soulful record quite like a well-orchestrated rhythm section. The pulsating groove confidently established throughout Cyan Blue sets the perfect backdrop for Wilson’s atmospheric vocal performance. The album opens with “My Way”, a driving tune where the underlying rhythm courses along a distinct current, teasing what is to come with a gospel-like flare. The shimmering guitar sprawled out over the infectious bass in “Do You Still” demands attention and stimulates the listener, hooking them into Wilson’s refreshing musical discourse. The dynamic range in Cyan Blue isn’t gigantic but it is staggeringly impactful. Floating away from the pulsating groove of the livelier songs, she delivers many moments where tracks are stripped down and this is where the album truly begins to glow.

The record plays like a personal reflection, one that is intimate and honest. Wilson’s voice is tranquilizing, echoing through the darkness and coaxing the listener into submission. The quieter moments are where Wilson truly provides a visceral listening experience. At the end of “I Don’t Love You”, a glaringly exclamatory song, the ensemble is reduced to a subtle bass line huddled underneath Wilson’s voice, a move that builds an intensity in her lyrical statements. This kind of dynamic restraint recurs often throughout the album and lends a potency to the melancholic tracks. In “New Day” a haunting melody is presented through the fusion of vocals and piano, both following the same fluttering tune. The result is a wonderfully somber song that digs into the sonic psyche, leading the listener into the sobering world that Wilson has created.

Cyan Blue is loaded with a spectacular range of infectious melodies, subtle ambience and even some unexpected surprises. A pensive rendition of the classic tune “Over The Rainbow” hides deep in the middle of the record and offers another small taste of Wilson’s exceptionally imaginative musical style. A record as rich as Cyan Blue deserves many listens and has a lot more to offer outside of what little is mentioned here. It has proven itself as an album that was undeniably worth the wait”.

Although not a bran-new artist, as someone releasing her second studio album, it is an interesting time for Charlotte Day Wilson. Perhaps not known by all, we are in this transition stage where her new music is going to introduce her to a much bigger audience. We are going to be hearing a lot more from this extraordinary artist…