Lael Neale has released a new album, “Star Eaters Delight”, today via Sub Pop Records. She shared its fourth single, “Must Be Tears,” via a self-directed video. Neale had this to say about the video in a press release: “Even though I’ve lived through many springs, the season never fails to disappoint me with its lingering cold and dreariness. Flowers are nature’s apology.”
Previously Neale shared the album’s first single, “I Am the River,” also via a self-directed music video. Then she shared its second single, the over eight-minute long “In Verona,” via a self-directed video in which Neale plays a newscaster. The next and its third single, “Faster Than the Medicine,” also via a self-directed video.
“Star Eaters Delight” is the follow up to 2021’s “Acquainted With Night”, which was her debut for Sub Pop and was recorded in 2019. The new album was recorded after Neale moved from Los Angeles to her family’s farm in rural Virginia in April 2020.
“Acquainted with Night” was a focusing inward amidst the loud and bright Los Angeles surrounding me. It was an attempt to create spaciousness and quiet reverie within. When I moved back to the farm, I found that the unbroken silences compelled me to break them with sound. This album is more external. It is a reaching back out to the world, wanting to feel connected, to wake up, to come together again,” explained Neale in a previous press release.
The follow-up to Lael Neale’s folk fuelled and Omnichord driven “Acquainted With Night” is somehow even better. Though Neale set out on her own path with the preceding album, here she takes things further and wagers on risks that handsomely payoff. “If I Had No Wings” and “Must Be Tears” stick with her prior approach, but the album’s most stunning moments come on tracks such as the eight-minute single “In Verona.” Neale exudes a post-punk air of detachment in a chilling retelling of the tale of Shakespeare’s star crossed lovers.
“Faster Than the Medicine” has the bass thumping rush of New Order’s best. While, the closing track “Lead Me Blind” pushes a heartfelt and piano-driven ballad through layers and layers of tape hiss like some long forgotten outtake from the Smithsonian Anthology of American Folk Music.
The Fat Angel Sings 