It’s easier still to admire the late-album sequence of the grungy “Love of My Life", where Calvi works herself up then catches her breath, then “Carry Me Over", a five-and-a-half-minute, largely instrumental composition that’s a showcase for all Calvi’s training: anxious marimba, guitar both sedate and squealing and string atmospherics these two tracks together would constitute a career high. The meticulous “Piece By Piece” is impressive in a methodical way, as it runs through indignant guitar solos, then muted synth lines, then bursting, romantic strings, like unraveling a relationship in reverse. This isn’t to say One Breath is a subtle album in fact, it’s best when it’s not. It’s the sort of subtle structure, plotted like a film-Calvi has mentioned writing her songs in such a manner-that’s easy to miss but rewarding if you don’t. Calvi sings barely above a breath: “I’ve got one, one second to live/ before I say what I’ve got to say,” then gives the track first to distortion, then to an orchestral finale that materializes out of it. Hence the title track, which sprawls like a minute in slow motion. (Calvi is far more vulnerable in music than in interviews she’s cited the death of a loved one as an inspiration for One Breath, but either sidesteps or dismisses any other further explanations journalists have offered up.) “It’s… very thrilling to feel you're out of control and don't know what's going to happen, but it’s also scary,” Calvi told The Observer recently. The album’s heavier on the latter, being a shade darker and angrier than its precursor, the product of a tumultuous year. Vincent, who worked with him on Actor and Strange Mercy, but the sound is still Calvi: alternately haunting, like a lost noir theme, or just a bit more disarming than you’d expect. Calvi switches producers from Harvey associate Rob Ellis to John Congleton, a prolific producer among alt-folk types like Shearwater, Sarah Jaffe and especially St. One Breath, Calvi’s follow-up recorded in six weeks in France, is far from a departure.
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