Review
"Shadows" unfolds with old analogue synthesizers, a simple keyboard refrain, and what sounds like an early 1970s drum machine before transitioning into a desolately beautiful twilight zone. Cate Kennan's second self-produced record captures a state of quiet dislocation, drawing heavily from the rustic landscapes northwest of Los Angeles where she grew up.
Critics have pinned the album down as a "crepuscular dream" defined by "barely-breathed vocals" and an underlying worry about what is fading from our grasp. Her voice drifts through the arrangements: "distant, etiolated, devoid of colour," sailing above a skeletal backdrop of sparse guitar plucks, lap steel, and castanets.
There is an antique, "almost covered in fingerprints" warmth to these delicate tracks, evoking the fragile, home-recorded charm of Broadcast's early demos and the intimacy of classic 1970s folk. Amid detuned instruments and "intimate piano thoughts", Kennan's hazy memory-pieces work together to craft a slow-moving, deeply private meditation on nostalgia and loss.
