Ned Collette - Mixed Light LP

Ned Collette’s last few records (including the latest) have been slow-burners that sound like good if understated albums on first listen before lines and melodies gradually worm their way into your brain and you find the LP in constant rotation. While this may seem like a back-handed comment, I mean it as anything but - these are the best kind of listening experiences! To be perhaps a little over the top, it’s records like these that are a balm to the disposable immediacy of the streaming age!

On Mixed Light, Collette is again joined by a luminous list of players—Leah Senior, Joe Talia, Chris Abrahams, Judith Hamann, and Bonnie “Prince” Billy to name a handful— that depart from the UK folk leanings of the last few towards something a little more psych-rock heavy. Words still sit at the fore, with surreal images sitting on metaphorical edges (between wake and sleep, night and day, in frame and out of it) drifting through accompanied by lush instrumentation that is even more expansive: spindly guitars, slinking bass lines, pulsing synths, flamenco-esque acoustic playing, horns and even a xylophone kicking around in there playing everything from krauty drives to a jaunty interlude. Yet this is no sudden turn, with one of these tracks that has their roots in recording sessions back in 2008. What more could you expect from the Collette stamp of quality?? Can’t wait to play it again! –Mitch