White Vinyl For a singer-songwriter, the benefit of starting from a point of quiet is the room it allows for manoeuvre afterwards. Such is the case with the subtly cinematic second album from Sandra Sumie Nagano, Lost in Light via Bella Union. On 2013’s eponymous debut, Sumie tapped into the mid-point between Scandinavian and Japanese folk music to deliver an album of blissful restraint, its quietude shaped by a combination of parenthood and natural inclination. The follow-up is an album of stealthy dynamism, drama and mystery, its impact made all the greater because it skirts obvious routes to dance just out of hand’s reach, always seeming to be on the verge of departure. Nocturnal partings underpin the Leonard Cohen-ish Blue Lines, where Sumie’s voice rings out sweet and pure over a plucked guitar. The soulful Pouring Down finds her singing of “cold rivers” over warm keys, while Fr? (“seed”) occupies a world unto itself, existing in a state of suspended rapture. Leave Me luxuriates over warm violins, recalling separations under “skies in black”. The mood is impeccably sustained for the gorgeously lilting The Only Lady, a riff on US-indie filmmaker Miranda July’s novel The First Bad Man, with quotes from David Bowie’s sweetly loved-up Kooks included. To close, Walk Away offers a final reverie on departures, its aching trumpet and plucked guitar building to the gentlest of crescendos. Lost in Light is a screen-style dream of an album itself: immersive while it lasts, haunting after it flickers out of view.
