Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Lost Songs, we all have had the waking dream of a tune in our head and the words to match, but like an old fashioned radio that found its signal wandering during the night, we forget what poked its way through the clouds of brain fog and static eye movements, and so those would be classic hits, the songs that might have punctured the reserve and the shell of the cruel and unusual and forcing them to do right by humanity, are gone, just soundwaves never to be recaptured.
In the first album of original tracks since the recording of 2017s Off White, internationally acclaimed Lotte Kestner returns to the arena of life in the haunting and elaborative sound of Lost Songs, and as the inspiration of finding a voice for the reasons, perhaps the explanations behind certain experiences in life such as moving home; for in transit and transition we lose part of ourselves in the hope of gaining a new truth, another viable way to see the same shore but from a different, and hopefully more compelling angle.
In what is a truly marvellous piece of collaboration, Lotte Kestner is joined by Kevin Long, Chris J Cunningham, and Damien Jurado, and with the songstress once more taking the helm on engineering, producing, and mixing, as well as being the inspiration behind her own music, songs such as Slip, Weaving, Colors That Did Not Exist, At The Cannons, Closest, and Fade Away, what is revealed is that that nothing, if you respect it with openness, with care and memory, is ever truly lost.
Only that which we never truly understood or never care to see again remains lost to our eyes, to our hearts, otherwise it is only stagnant, sitting patiently on the edge of the eyeline, waving from the shore that you wished to visit from another angle, hoping to catch your attention once more so that it might take in a huge breath and live again.
Lost Songs is energy reborn, the time out from capturing the essence of the distant shore and the new home in which to place the soul has been worthwhile, and it is a piece of music and art that heralds a new beginning for one of America’s modern greats.
Ian D. Hall