Artist: Claire Voyant

CD Title: Lustre

Label: Metropolis Records:

Reviewer: Jim Zombie

Date: 12/6/09

Lustre is an album outside my usual musical sphere of experience. I wanted to write about an album, any album, so in my haste and ignorance, I picked Claire Voyant, a band I have no experience with. I soon found myself out of my depth dealing with a very feminie, emotional and ethereal album. It wasn' t till walking home, in a light misty rain after a day at work that it stuck me! Though not my usual  cup-o-tea , Lustre was a very good album. As a music critic and lover I do enjoy a vast variety of music but recently I have found myself sticking very closely to industrial genres. Lustre is a great reminder that we should always keep our minds open to new music and genres.

Victoria Lloyd' s beautiful lyrical talent is the primary colour in Claire Voyant's musical arsenal, that much is apparent throughout the album but it is the arrangement of  Chris Ross handling programming, synth; Benjamin Fargen on guitar; and Garin Casaleggio on drums, that produces the diverse sound that is fit for painting the emotional vista of Lustre. The album is ethereal, hypnotic, longing, catchy, and with tracks like Painted Gold, occasionally edging on the psychedelic.

Energetic tracks like Lustre, Shine and Painted Gold are the spicy glue that holds the album together. These are the tracks that fires a storm of synaptic connections and engages the audience of what may otherwise be an otherwise lethargic, yet still beautiful and wonderful, album. These are the tracks that will draw in your casual listener, exposing them to a deeper and richer musical experience.
 

Check out the band:
http://www.myspace.com/clairevoyant