Dorothea Paas — Think of Mist (Telephone Explosion)
Photo by Colin Medley
Dorothea Paas’s debut album, Anything Can’t Happen, was one of the picks for our 2021 Mid-Year Round-Up — and rightly so. Its warm thrum of band-in-a-room folk-rock and Paas’s beautifully expressive voice made it a standout of that year. On her new album, Think of Mist, Paas couches her voice in much more gentle, jazzy arrangements, while her lyrics plea for the dissolution of the self, a melting away that’s conveyed in the luscious, pillowy feel of the music. Don’t get too comfortable, though: it turns out there’s a sting in the album’s tail.
Opener “My Hand Makes Ripples on the Surface of the Water” acts as both an introduction to the album’s dreamy sound-world, with its nylon-string guitar, bass, and synths, and a lyrical delineation of the boundary between Paas and her surroundings. As she gently intones the song title and repeats the phrase “I surrender,” it feels like the start of a benign meditation session. Then, on single “Autumn Roses,” the sly sway of soft-rock is introduced as Paas sings invitingly, “Are you ready to come into my world?”
From this point on, the journey is largely smooth and homogenous. Some of the songs feel like echoes of one another, such as “Diver” revisiting the water imagery of the opener, and short instrumental interludes “Made of Mist” and “Resolve” create an uninterrupted sense of flow. There’s an expansion of perception in “Night Picture,” which feels akin to Phil Elverum’s work as Mount Eerie, Paas mentioning the sky, the trees, a lake, and nocturnal creatures. On “Maybe I’ll Fade” she’s moved from touching the surface of the water to singing the line, “I want to be the water.” This sense of abandon characterizes much of the record.
However, doubt sets in on “Whatever That Means”: “I’m afraid of losing whole days to something I don’t understand.” This leads inexorably to “Locked,” the album’s gorgeous but strangely unnerving denouement. The song has a lulling sway, punctuated by crisp rimshots, then suddenly, out of the music’s gentle fabric, looms a horrible distorted scream. Dissolution has finally been achieved — only for the protagonist to panic and emit a terrifying mortal cry. It cleverly colors the perception of all that has come before.
