After spending the first half of her musical career as a cellist and key performer in large Montreal ensembles, notably Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra and Esmerine, Rebecca Foon stepped into the spotlight in 2013 with her solo project Saltland. Since then her output has been steady, oscillating between formally austere instrumental compositions and a kind of elevated pop music, like the songs we find on her latest, Black Butterflies. In its tone more than in its instrumental architecture, the album has the hushed grace of late-’80s dream pop sliding against the narcotized nodding of early-’90s trip-hop. Pieces like the opener, “You Have Known Beyond This Time,” are slowly urged along by electronic beats and minimalist piano left to echo in the spaces between Foon’s cello and the violin of her sister, Aliayta Foon-Dancoes. Foon’s vocals sit right on the surface of the pieces, teasing out secrets, confessions, and arcane truths that are quietly shared and sorrowfully earned. The mood permeates the album.
Arguably the best description of the album is the cover image, a photograph by Foon that looks through a forest clearing to see the layers of growth from foreground to background. The frame never suggests human presence, despite having, by its sheer existence, a point of view. Black Butterflies feels like something Foon inhabits; she is like a spirit adrift within a flow of images and feelings. This is sensed in a tickle of nerve endings, yet hard to really wrap your arms around—it’s there and not there.
ERIC HILL has written about music and culture for over two decades, primarily for Exclaim! His biweekly podcast, Surgery Radio, has been exploring the soft boundaries of experimental, ambient, and pop music since 2004. He has managed Backstreet Records in Fredericton for most of his adult life.