Frances is, musically, a builder. Though her first works evoked the early ’70s successes of Joni Mitchell, Nested in Tangles, like Keeper, has more to do with the byzantine delights of Hejira and even more to do with the unapologetic grandeur of Laura Nyro’s visionary world. She is a prog-rock devotee who demanded that the oft-maligned Gentle Giant be namechecked in her press release, an open-tuning acoustic guitarist who understands that her particular approach to playing allows for layer upon layer of sound to rise and shift around her.
Nested in Tangles often sounds enormous and expensive, songs like “Falling From and Further” or “Heavy Light” suggesting an expert orchestral ensemble. But it’s really just Frances, producer Kevin Copeland, and a few friends that occasionally include Grizzly Bear’s Daniel Rossen, all playing multiple instruments and, it seems, often asking one another, “But how can we make this more interesting?” Even the two-minute instrumental “A Body, A Map”—ostensibly just an interlude before the album’s transformative final third—is a wonderland of derring-do. An opening electric drone becomes the foundation for a restless riff-and-rhythm tandem, magnetic and hypnotic in their collective sway. It’s the kind of casually riveting sound a veteran math-rock band might beg to borrow, but it’s only an aside for Frances. Nothing is passive on Nested in Tangles, nothing plain.
Frances’ musical action mirrors the personal quest that makes Nested in Tangles so compelling, more than just a string of dazzling musical moves or private grievances gone public: to outstrip the woe and grief of her upbringing, to become more than such a life should allow. The record’s skeleton key is “Life’s Work,” the most brisk and hooky tune in Frances’ catalogue. “Learning to trust in spite of it is life’s work,” she offers in the refrain, her voice knotting into a yelp at that last bit, a reminder of just how hard the work of trust can be. Then there’s “Steady in the Hand,” an elegiac love song where Frances realizes she’s already witnessed the limits of said love, that the best has already been. “It takes living and losing to know what matters,” she croons after the climax: “The loving shatters the edges and softens me again.” Disappointment, anger, and dejection dot these nine songs, but this is Frances’ flash of pure grace, as she sees someone else’s failures as an opportunity to improve herself. It’s a scowl shifting at least temporarily into a very soft smile.
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