As half of synth duo School Dance, Denver-based artist Allison Lorenzen has developed an ability to inhabit seemingly inhospitable spaces. For no matter how detailed or evocative the soundscapes the band conjured, there was always some overarching austerity to their sound. Some sense of drift. Lorenzen’s vocal melodies proved the ideal medium with which to negotiate such a vastness. Ethereal yet grounded in humanity, a tether to familiar ground, a link to what is known.
This month saw the release of ‘VALE’, the first song Allison Lorenzen has released under her own name. Building upon and pushing beyond the School Dance style, the track embraces the stark and the mysterious, with Madeline Johnston (AKA Midwife) lending guitar and backing vocals to further deepen the sound. What results is a song that lives up to its title, a shadow space of glisten and reverb that is as ominous as it is alluring, daring the listener to peer over the edge into the dark depths beyond.
But as ‘VALE’ unfolds, a different perspective dawns. For beyond the McCarthyian desolation, something else stirs. The sense that, perhaps, the dark is not some adjacent threat, but the very space around us. Perhaps we’re already sitting in darkness, and our inability to flee is not a fearful reaction but a steadfast show of strength. If we’re already in the vale, or indeed are the vale itself, then thoughts can turn in a different direction. Be it hope of future illumination, or merely the knowledge that we can withstand such a space, and learn to live within it.
In the pale of the warmth,
the pale of the fire.
I’m like a vale in the night
Art by Travis Hetman, photo by Kyle Johnson