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Album Review | ‘Veils’ by Vanessa Carlton
Veils entrances you with mystifying dream-pop to carry through the layers of various emotional landscapes.
Though Vanessa Carlton’s enduring hit “A Thousand Miles” may be what she’s most recognized for, her music has much more depth than one mer hit. Her sound began to evolve into a mystifying form of indie-pop by 2011’s Rabbits on the Run. Liberman perfected this sound into a synthesis of sophisticated storybook dream-pop.
Her latest release, Veils, further refines that sound into a hypnotic web of creamy synths and foggy production from the Mercury Rev’s Dave Fridman. Lyrically, we flow through time as we break past emotional/mental obstacles that attempt to stifle our growth along the way.
Carlton chose the album’s title to reflect these evolutions of self to show the depth of the human experience:
“It was not just the right title for the song that ended up being the final [one] of the record, but also the handle for the entire project. I really looked at a lot of the songs as embodying different versions of the same person. There’s layers upon layers within the record. It’s almost like each song, you’re lifting a new layer to the next veil. Who is the real person? I don’t know, but it all encapsulates a human experience…
