Private Life

Virginia Wing stunned with 2018s Ecstatic Arrow, and on private LIFE, the heights they reach are only slightly less surprising. Wisely, they dont try to recapture Arrows magic. Alice Merida Richards and Samuel Pillay are too creatively restless to do that, and so is the music on their fourth album. Where Ecstatic Arrows galvanizing strength and serenity made a wide, radiant arc, private LIFE rustles and shimmers like a sound sculpture. On songs such as Lucky Coin, bright, sharp-edged guitars, kotos, and synths ripple over choppy rhythms, adding to the impression that everything is in flux. The discrete sounds Virginia Wing use on private LIFE emphasize how the second half of the albums title expresses a vitality that thrives behind closed doors. Its tracks often feel less like pop songs and more like scenes playing out in different locales: OBW Saints touches on arch, asymmetrical post-punk before ending in applause and a lopsided rendition of When the Saints Go Marching In. On Moon Turns Tides, Richards sounds like shes in the middle of a street fair, contemplating her existence. Virginia Wings skill at capturing the ways the inner and outer worlds of experience coexist and combine remains remarkable on private LIFE. This is partly because of their deft layering of instrumentation and found sounds, but largely because of Richards voice. She guides her audience through the album with a Laurie Anderson-like perceptiveness and a warmth that is all her own on songs like Im Holding Out for Something, where she could be a euphorically self-aware AI, and in the carefully captured details of Return to View (Im conscious of taking up all the space with my breath). Occasionally, private LIFE delivers more of the joyous eureka moments that made Ecstatic Arrow so winning -- the rapturous final track I Know About These Things is one of them -- but more often, Pillay and Richards are seeking answers. Fortunately, they sound just as captivating asking questions on the lilting, looping St. Francis Fountain as they did on their previous albums quiet assurance. This unrepentantly unsettled, searching feel makes private LIFE a little less immediate than Ecstatic Arrow, but as they lean into the more experimental side of their music, Virginia Wing share a rich inner life that reveals more with each listen. ~ Heather Phares