Dorothea Paas - Think Of Mist (2024) [Hi-Res]
![Dorothea Paas - Think Of Mist (2024) [Hi-Res]](https://www.dibpic.com/uploads/posts/2024-11/1731648478_a0017133400_10.jpg)
BAND/ARTIST: Dorothea Paas
- Title: Think Of Mist
- Year Of Release: 2024
- Label: Telephone Explosion Records
- Genre: alternative, ambient folk, alt-folk, avant-pop
- Quality: 24-48000 FLAC; 16-44100 FLAC
- Total Time: 00:31:53
- Total Size: 173; 357 MB
- WebSite: Album Preview
Think of Mist is Paas’s sophomore album, following 2021’s Polaris-longlisted Anything Can’t Happen - “one of the most stirring and emotionally resonant break-up albums of recent years” (Uncut). Widely praised for its emotional resonance and lush sonic landscape, Anything showcased the talent that has made Paas a fixture of Toronto’s music scene for over a decade - both as the leader of her own band, and as a vocalist and guitarist for a constellation of groups including U.S. Girls, Jennifer Castle and Shabason & Krgovich.
Think of Mist is an instruction: a playful guided meditation for the listener as they enter 32 thoroughly cohesive, yet surprise-filled, minutes of music. On this album, as on Anything, Paas’s lyrics braid emotional vulnerability with subtle, disarming wit; her crystal-clear voice, honed in childhood opera choir and church bands, forms a counterpoint with her experimental, autodidactic approach to instrumentation, which can travel from folk to math rock in a single song. (Paas came of age as a guitarist in a small-town DIY scene rife with heavy shredders like Paul Saulnier of P.S. I Love You, who contributes guitar and bass to this album.)
But Think of Mist is new territory. In the years since Anything’s release, Paas began writing arrangements for Badge Époque Ensemble and Marker Starling. Writing in those groups’ jazz-, prog- and psychedelia-inflected styles led Paas to give her own songs the same treatment. Paas composed a batch of new songs on her mother’s classical guitar, then built them out with the same kind of intricate, prismatic arrangements she’d been writing for other musicians.
The result is an album that is lushly textured and sonically unique - turning from sprawling experimentation to unabashedly catchy bops and back again. Lyrically, these are “love songs” that move beyond typical romance into broader philosophies of desire, seeking the freedom that comes from accepting the necessary mysteries of love and life. Paas grapples with themes of ambivalence, the darker side of desire, and surrender. She pushes her voice in new directions, too: screaming Kate Bush-style through the background of a ballad, or, inspired by Alice Damon’s windy soundscapes, layering soft harmonies on top of each other until they become a wall of sound.
When asked to define the album’s genre, Paas riffs out a series of possible styles - “avant easy,” “slightly busted baroque pop” “choral freak folk,” “search rock” - that hints at the diverse range of influences permeating Think of Mist. She cites artists like Judee Sill, Linda Perhacs, The Free Design, Burt Bacharach, Steven Sondheim, and Hiroshi Yoshimura as inspirations - but she wears these influences lightly. More than anything, Think of Mist’s most distinctive influence might be found in nature: Paas says she knew the album was complete when she saw its waveforms during the mixing process, how they crescendoed and receded like real waves. Songs frequently begin as sprawling soundscapes, assemble into a propulsive groove, and then untie into fluttering ribbons of harmony.
Take the album’s meditative opening track, with its whispering vocals and softly strummed classical guitar: it melts seamlessly into lead single “Autumn Roses,” a breezy, locked-in folk-pop bop that improbably borrows lyrics from Paas’s diary, Chekov’s Uncle Vanya and Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. It’s addictively catchy, and a perfect encapsulation of the way Paas plays with lightness and heaviness, harmony and dissonance, braiding them together. “I am controlled, I am the controller,” she sings over a synth groove so airy it threatens to lift off the ground.
The album’s centrepiece is “Maybe I’ll Fade,” which Paas describes as a “psychosexual ode to Niagara Falls.” The song, she says, “began as a meditation on the feeling of desire I felt when looking at the churning and falling sheets of water. If I shift my perspective I can see the water as individual drops, or one huge, crushing mass.”
It’s a stunning meditation on desire, and a statement of purpose. “Make me like you, take me with you,” Paas sings, as the song builds to a peak of crashing drums and cascading keyboards - “endless and endlessly new.” The song ends with a field recording of the Falls, recorded with her partner during an early moment in their new relationship. The mist is both real and a metaphor, solid and ephemeral. Desire can stop your heart, or start it. On Think of Mist, Dorothea Paas does both. - Emma Healey
Tracklist:
1-1. Dorothea Paas - My Hand Creates Ripples On The Surface Of The Water (01:51)
1-2. Dorothea Pas - Autumn Roses (04:15)
1-3. Dorothea Paas - Night Picture (05:05)
1-4. Dorothea Paas - Diver (02:51)
1-5. Dorothea Paas - Maybe I'll Fade (03:47)
1-6. Dorothea Paas - Made Of Mist (01:51)
1-7. Dorothea Paas - Whatever That Means (03:42)
1-8. Dorothea Paas - Resolve (00:13)
1-9. Dorothea Paas - No Metaphor (03:18)
1-10. Dorothea Paas - Locked (05:00)
Think of Mist is an instruction: a playful guided meditation for the listener as they enter 32 thoroughly cohesive, yet surprise-filled, minutes of music. On this album, as on Anything, Paas’s lyrics braid emotional vulnerability with subtle, disarming wit; her crystal-clear voice, honed in childhood opera choir and church bands, forms a counterpoint with her experimental, autodidactic approach to instrumentation, which can travel from folk to math rock in a single song. (Paas came of age as a guitarist in a small-town DIY scene rife with heavy shredders like Paul Saulnier of P.S. I Love You, who contributes guitar and bass to this album.)
But Think of Mist is new territory. In the years since Anything’s release, Paas began writing arrangements for Badge Époque Ensemble and Marker Starling. Writing in those groups’ jazz-, prog- and psychedelia-inflected styles led Paas to give her own songs the same treatment. Paas composed a batch of new songs on her mother’s classical guitar, then built them out with the same kind of intricate, prismatic arrangements she’d been writing for other musicians.
The result is an album that is lushly textured and sonically unique - turning from sprawling experimentation to unabashedly catchy bops and back again. Lyrically, these are “love songs” that move beyond typical romance into broader philosophies of desire, seeking the freedom that comes from accepting the necessary mysteries of love and life. Paas grapples with themes of ambivalence, the darker side of desire, and surrender. She pushes her voice in new directions, too: screaming Kate Bush-style through the background of a ballad, or, inspired by Alice Damon’s windy soundscapes, layering soft harmonies on top of each other until they become a wall of sound.
When asked to define the album’s genre, Paas riffs out a series of possible styles - “avant easy,” “slightly busted baroque pop” “choral freak folk,” “search rock” - that hints at the diverse range of influences permeating Think of Mist. She cites artists like Judee Sill, Linda Perhacs, The Free Design, Burt Bacharach, Steven Sondheim, and Hiroshi Yoshimura as inspirations - but she wears these influences lightly. More than anything, Think of Mist’s most distinctive influence might be found in nature: Paas says she knew the album was complete when she saw its waveforms during the mixing process, how they crescendoed and receded like real waves. Songs frequently begin as sprawling soundscapes, assemble into a propulsive groove, and then untie into fluttering ribbons of harmony.
Take the album’s meditative opening track, with its whispering vocals and softly strummed classical guitar: it melts seamlessly into lead single “Autumn Roses,” a breezy, locked-in folk-pop bop that improbably borrows lyrics from Paas’s diary, Chekov’s Uncle Vanya and Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. It’s addictively catchy, and a perfect encapsulation of the way Paas plays with lightness and heaviness, harmony and dissonance, braiding them together. “I am controlled, I am the controller,” she sings over a synth groove so airy it threatens to lift off the ground.
The album’s centrepiece is “Maybe I’ll Fade,” which Paas describes as a “psychosexual ode to Niagara Falls.” The song, she says, “began as a meditation on the feeling of desire I felt when looking at the churning and falling sheets of water. If I shift my perspective I can see the water as individual drops, or one huge, crushing mass.”
It’s a stunning meditation on desire, and a statement of purpose. “Make me like you, take me with you,” Paas sings, as the song builds to a peak of crashing drums and cascading keyboards - “endless and endlessly new.” The song ends with a field recording of the Falls, recorded with her partner during an early moment in their new relationship. The mist is both real and a metaphor, solid and ephemeral. Desire can stop your heart, or start it. On Think of Mist, Dorothea Paas does both. - Emma Healey
Tracklist:
1-1. Dorothea Paas - My Hand Creates Ripples On The Surface Of The Water (01:51)
1-2. Dorothea Pas - Autumn Roses (04:15)
1-3. Dorothea Paas - Night Picture (05:05)
1-4. Dorothea Paas - Diver (02:51)
1-5. Dorothea Paas - Maybe I'll Fade (03:47)
1-6. Dorothea Paas - Made Of Mist (01:51)
1-7. Dorothea Paas - Whatever That Means (03:42)
1-8. Dorothea Paas - Resolve (00:13)
1-9. Dorothea Paas - No Metaphor (03:18)
1-10. Dorothea Paas - Locked (05:00)
Year 2024 | Pop | Folk | Alternative | Ambient | FLAC / APE | HD & Vinyl
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