Album Review: Melodie Nelson - To The Dollhouse

It hasn't taken Melodie Nelson long to follow up the hazy dream-laden songs of her 2011 debut, Meditations Of The Sun, with a second release, yet To The Dollhouse is neither a rushed affair nor a rehash of past successes. Rather it's an album steeped in the jazz-inflected melancholic pop of the late-'60s and early-'70s, inhabited by the likes of Nico and Vashti Bunyan. Yet, rather than holding a mirror up to such influences, Nelson steps through it into a world of her own making.

Opening with the smoky coquettishness of Cherry Cherry, it's also evident that Nelson (the solo moniker of Lia Tsamoglou) has grown exponentially in confidence and belief. Joined by Geoffrey O'Connor on Six Six Six, it's a deliciously gloomy duet that evokes the otherworldly heartaches and daydreams of Air's Virgin Suicides soundtrack, and it haunts well after the last of the strings die away. The ever-present organ helps to affect this (especially on tracks like Martha and Spin The Bottle), yet Nelson's vocals drift overhead like a dewy-eyed chanteuse, ensconced in cigarette smoke and velvet curtains.

To The Dollhouse is very much an atmospheric experiment in mood and place, with Nelson's memorably darkly-tinged lyrics – “She rises up to meet her maker/He reaches down with heavy arms to take her/To the dollhouse” and “I will haunt him even if he's sorry” are just two gems – and woozily delivered vocals making the experience all the more believable. For all the artists obsessed with period pastiche and emulation, To The Dollhouse marks Melodie Nelson out as one who actually understands, appreciates and manipulates the medium, with enigmatic and pleasurable results.