All it took was encouragement from one of the most courageous vocalists of the 20th century to get a New York University grad student (and Toronto native) to sing. Thus became Lydia Ainsworth, Joan La Barbara protégé, whose fractured-fairytale, electro-etched chamber music skirts, a widening chasm of unspeakable terror. Whether that chasm is an encroaching technological age or something way more personal, naming her influences and guessing at her fears aren’t fair ways to describe Ainsworth’s debut. Because the lush Right From Real is something altogether so much more immediate: pop with a perfectionist’s bent poised irrevocably on the cusp of a complete breakdown.
From first track “Candle,” in which a well-made bed of strings gives way to first Ainsworth’s confident voice and then the dissolution of the same—her harmonies faulting, flickering like the flame of the light source she names—through a bleeping choral séance “White Shadows”, unnerving hymns to robot religions “Malachite”, and certifiably radio-ready hits fringed with face-melting fog (“PSI”), Ainsworth’s first album is more than impressive, it’s impeccable. And it’s all there in the name: she pulls order from chaos; she extracts the “right” from the “real.” Not because she feels obliged to temper her more experimental tendencies with pop trappings, but because in the neatness of a traditionally minded song, the more unwieldy, destructive sentiments of her art burn ever fiercer. It is a fierce debut, after all, and being Lydia Ainsworth’s first, one wonders where she has to go from here. Like Grimes, who similarly found her voice on Montreal label Arbutus, Ainsworth’s gift for melody and effortless arrangements will undoubtedly mean bigger things. But if Right From Real’s tendencies are any sign, she’s heading face-first deeper into that chasm. Things are about to get really real.—
The Fat Angel Sings 