Desert Liminal is the recording project of Chicago’s Sarah Jane Quillin, practising a brand of dream pop with a dark undercurrent, as though threatening to morph into a nightmare beneath your feet. The first full-length Desert Liminal album, Static Thick is this sound perfected, a foggy, mysterious thing that constantly shifts and shivers, dark and light cresting and crashing over one another in a constant loop.
Opener ‘Sun Limina’ is the ideal example of this, and is an immediate introduction to Quillin’s poetic songwriting. “The day the storm came the air rang static thick,” she sings as the bass reverberates across the track, “and the skull buzz drone of life swung on its hinge.” The unpredictable nature of the instrumentation is at odds with Qullin’s vocal delivery, her voice remaining even and monotone, a cold reportage of what seems a tale of grief and loss, as though she has found herself sunken beneath a sea of shock.
“The pain’s a concatenated shape of little things
I’m living in the John Prine songs he used to sing
and searching for those circling hawks he used to see
staring out the gray-blue eyes he gave to me”
[bandcamp width=100% height=120 album=402362227 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 tracklist=false artwork=small track=3589155966]
Though the bass rumble remains, ‘Slept In’ is an altogether lighter sound, though the uplift in tone belies lyrics filled with doubt and worry, the narrator finding themselves in a kind of wounded stasis, a period of gasping after some traumatic event. Despite starting sedately, ‘Slow Sundays’ doesn’t live up to its name, the adamant drums that fight for control of the track eventually winning out, gathering speed and momentum until the thunderous final third, where Quillin’s vocals are lost beneath their furious beat.
“I still daydream ways to burn our empty house
slow sundays chase a face to blow a ring of smoke around
I still slip out after dark to ride the curves
then skip walk home alone to breath the sea and hear it burn”
[bandcamp width=100% height=120 album=402362227 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 tracklist=false artwork=small track=1291585521]
‘Sandstone / Magnolia’ follows with an almost mechanical feel, bringing to mind the clockwork dystopia of Parts & Labor, before ‘Heavy Heads’ strips things back with a densely cloudy ambience. This narcotic haze inhabits both the instrumentation and vocals, a dulling, numbing force through which Quillan tries to be heard, though perhaps the disorientation is less a high than the cravings of a high past. As she explains, the track is about “love and validation functioning like a drug on mood and stability, and trying to function as they are given and taken away.”
‘Low Life Corridor’ is a stone cold fever dream, the vocals echoing and fading their abstract imagery, before the song pivots into something altogether more urgent, and ‘Smoke & Sun’ manages to sneak from beneath the crushing ambience, at least for a short while. Still, the track feels rushed, as though trying to outrun something just out of sight, and this feeling rises into moments of pure anxiety in the refrain. As the track settles back into Quillin’s deadpan delivery, the overriding feeling is more of danger, as though association with the narrator will only lead in one direction.
Closer ‘Kate Has’ feels like an attempt to escape this, like seeking help, as though spending time with someone less dangerous and desperate might pacify the situation. However, the unease bubbles beneath, refusing to leave, never allowing the dream to meander to a happy conclusion. Instead, the edges are distorted and the colours blurred, and each step must be judged carefully as no inch of the surroundings can be trusted. And the same could be said of the entire release—a dark album not afraid of light, not afraid of dreaming, and not afraid of crushing these hopes beneath an air both ominous and static thick.
[bandcamp width=100% height=120 album=402362227 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 tracklist=false artwork=small track=3266501199]
Static Thick is out now, and you can get digital and cassette editions from the Desert Liminal Bandcamp page.
Cover art by Kelly Quillin