With “Save As”, Elena Tonra, aka Ex:Re, redefines herself eight years after her first solo escape. And it was worth the wait.
A whisper. A dry guitar riff. And the voice, with a muted gravitas, of Elena Tonra… who, on the opening Radio Station, toys with her inability to pick the right wavelength. If the second solo album from Daughter’s singer took eight years to surface, it’s because she took her time.
The time spent shaping her sculpted demos (or not, depending on the mood, letting the rough edge of the sound speak) with her collaborator-director Fabian Prynn, who has previously worked with D. D. Dumbo or Dry Cleaning.
A tight-knit team of instrumentalists devoted to her cause
Around this duo, a small cadre of instrumentalists dedicated to her project—Josephine Stephenson on cello, Ben Reed on bass. The trip-hop echoes of Sleep, recorded in a Paris hotel room, paradoxically invite dancing even as dawn brushes the horizon.
If one thinks of Lana Del Rey in the vaporous demonstrations of Frozen Aisle, the weightless swells of Language of Love, the fleeting post-rock of Am I Even Real?, or the beats of the title track, they recall the melodic grace made in England that Tonra is capable of, shifting from precise acoustic folk to a dream pop that looks beyond, higher even, our existential confines. And when she exorcises the weight of grief with the closing Healing (Slow), her voice also manages to align with our own frequencies.
Save As (4AD/Wagram). Released on October 30.
