In a darkish gallery, wanting right into a vivid room with snow-covered flooring and a sq. gap lower from its middle—that is how a viewer experiences A Chilly Gap, an set up by artist Taryn Simon. But it surely’s not a static encounter: Watching from the gallery, you’ll routinely see somebody enter the intense room, climb into the outlet, and plunge into icy water beneath it. Simon sought to probe questions on public reward and private want. However when singer-songwriter Dana Foote noticed the piece at an artwork museum in Western Massachusetts, the darkish pit struck her as a strong metaphor for a interval of melancholy or stagnancy—a “psychological winter,” she’s referred to as it.
Foote was in a single such winter whereas writing Swallow the Knife, her newest report as Sir Chloe. Impressed by Simon’s piece, she began referring to this state as being “within the gap,” and named the opening monitor on her new album after it. “The joys is gone/And nothing’s new,” she sings, despondent, over a crunch of guitars, “I’ve been within the gap.” It’s a bouncy, deceptively upbeat music, particularly given the circumstance it describes—and a becoming opening for a report of flamable, cathartic indie rock that mulls darkish themes.
Foote started recording music as a part of her senior thesis at Bennington Faculty; after a monitor from her first report went viral on TikTok, she landed a major-label deal, capping her Twenty first-century trajectory with a grungey, ’90s-inflected album, I Am the Canine. (The connection together with her label soured and so they have since parted methods.) Her newest launch follows on this vein, channeling PJ Harvey and the Pixies whereas detailing Foote’s expertise extricating herself from an abusive relationship and her grief within the face of what she endured. “Go on and inform me you’re the sufferer/Go on and inform me I’m the merciless one,” she hisses over a plucky guitar riff on “Kiss,” then chews by way of the syllables of the fuzzed-out refrain. “I don’t need love,” she repeats, “I would like revenge.” These are songs fueled by rage, however beset by migraines, secrets and techniques, disgrace, tears.
Foote is a commanding singer, her voice evoking a selected slice of the millennial canon: St. Vincent on the foreboding “Holy”; Metric’s Emily Haines on the swaggering “Overlook It.” On “Sophisticated,” she’s haunted by the previous, her voice almost shaking then rising steadier: “I received’t neglect the chilly and seething sound/It wakes me up and follows me round.” She stretches her vary on “Take It,” murmuring its verses and howling its refrain—and delivering the bridge as spoken phrase, a dangerous transfer that she largely pulls off due to a cool, indifferent tone. These are compact, punchy songs; they hardly ever provide any actual surprises, although they do, savvily and constantly, handle to generate a sticky riff or memorable hook inside their first 30 seconds.
Swallow the Knife loses steam within the remaining stretch, slowing down to supply a handful of quasi-ballads: the newly infatuated “Eyes,” whose intro doesn’t not recall “Fade Into You”; the mournful “Too A lot (Not Sufficient).” Its remaining monitor, “Sweet,” is an prolonged metaphor a few poisonous relationship—a associate who looks as if a deal with at first, however finally can’t provide something of substance, solely “aching tooth.” The music’s energy rests in its simplicity: simply fingerpicked guitar and Foote’s voice, which finally resolves right into a sequence of girl-group-inspired harmonies that begin off sunny however develop into unsettled. After an album of angst, betrayal, and survival, it seems like a tactical retreat—like washing out a bitter aftertaste to make method for one thing sweeter.
