NADIA REID
Enter Now Brightness (Chrysalis)
“YOU ARE EVERYTHING I would like to be”
On her previous albums – all of them quiet pleasures; all of them able to nestle in your spirit; all of them worth knowing well – Nadia Reid saying this might have been seen, whether rightly or wrongly it doesn’t matter, as unsure, or searching, wanting to be better or shedding something lesser. Not this time.
By the time Reid sings this near the end of her fourth album, what is clear is that she has found a place to be. Not somewhere of (self) perfection or arrogance that further knowledge (of self or wider) isn’t necessary; that’s not how New Zealanders work; that’s certainly not how Reid works. But it is a place enriched further each day, by love, by a child, by a grasp of what it means to be the recipient of and be responsible for both of those. By the world, as scary as it can be when you have more to lose, being a bit better generally.
The song, Hotel Santa Cruz, is joyful musically and lyrically. Over a fast shuffle rhythm and a leaning forward bassline, she looks at someone, admiring their qualities (unnamed but bountiful) and their life in context, drawing on the familiarity of this experience, which she recalls along with the “colour in your eyes”, and wants to be part of it all. Even when saying “I’m only seeking truth and light/Does it matter/Tell me does it matter” it comes without the implied doubt. Instead there’s the rush of wanting to be with them, like them, one of them, because it feels right.
In an interesting way, this is reinforced a couple of songs later with the closing track of the record, Send It Down The Line. Slower, quieter, laced with regrets or at least mistakes and missteps from before, it ponders generational legacies. Good or bad? Well, that’s not the point right now; they happened and they were felt but “[I] cannot fix a problem that ain’t mine,” Reid sings.
What then? The low throb of electronics, the high strum of acoustic guitar, and in between the gentle doo-da-da-doos of backing voices, create the tone of acceptance, the sense that blame, if that’s what it could be, ends now. “Here I am,” she repeats. “Send it down the line” because she’s ready to finish that journey. Most importantly, she’s able to finish that journey.
If the album ends with time run out for pain, it opens with Reid asking for “more time/I have my reasons” as the prospect – and at this stage only the potential, not in any concrete way the reality – of loss or pain looms over her. “Can this circle never break now/Far too much at stake now” comes as something of a shock it feels for its narrator, who seeks solace or promise wherever she can and Emanuelle, a song about the unknown leaving vulnerabilities where once you were beyond fearless because you didn’t even think about what might be and what might go wrong, is quite tender, and forgiving.
Typically for Reid it is presented quite sparely, reflecting folk pop roots and the intimate singer/songwriter mode familiar to us. But it is not actually typical of Enter Now Brightness, a record which extends the sonic palette at least as much as its emotional one, a combination best seen in Woman Apart, featuring an unlikely but effective cry of Ha! from Reid as it shifts into a chunkier country rock setting perfect for what sounds a more and more certain taking of control in life.
Elsewhere, there is tempered brass alongside piano, a fuller band sound and more prominent electric guitar, a song like Change Unchained where vocals push through a glossy ‘80s patina and ones like Cry On Cue and Second Nature which soak in a ‘70s pop bath in the way Pearl Charles does.
And even when she pulls everything away except voice and guitar in Even Now, Reid and co-producer Tom Healy subtly thicken the atmosphere with swelling mood-organic sounds like they have pulled in Daniel Lanois for the afternoon.
It speaks of confidence and ease. Like Nadia Reid is comfortable trying to be everything she would like to be.
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