(One Flash Records, released 3 Feb 2017)
True to its title, the great oceans endow Nadine Khouri’s full-length debut The Salted Air with its central conceit. This is, of course, nothing new; the sea has been immobilised in art from the Homeric epics up to Aalyiah’s 2001 hit ‘Rock the Boat’ and beyond. “Everybody has a key / at the bottom of the sea”; it’s a laconic line from the track ‘Jerusalem Blue’, but one that reveals Khouri’s sense of belonging in deepest mystery. The vast, unattainable sea is ironically invested with homeliness.
Opener ‘Thru You I Awaken’ is Khouri’s call to an oceanic muse, an invocation of The Salted Air’s animating force. ‘I put my sorrow in a bottle into the sea’ declares Khouri’s streaming vocal, recalling the ghostly croon of Scott Walker, later underscored by a cold violin drone. Khouri is at her most adventurous when haunted by the spirit of the old Mediterranean, when wheezing harmoniums and pump organs pulsate and thicken with matte strings, and Khouri’s ukulele is effortlessly transformed into a scurrying bouzouki.
However, the rest of the time, The Salted Air falls into blandly emoting folk balladry and clichéd lyricism, as if Khouri and her band are rehearsing for a performance at the Radio 2 Folk Awards. The toe-curling couplet ‘I ran through the dark / to the beat of my heart’ feels so hastily crammed into the first line of the second track it’s as though Khouri’s trying to pass it by the listener unnoticed. Similarly, gospel sketch ‘Shake it Like a Shaman’ sounds practically smuggled on board, an unfinished outtake tacked on so the album could reach a round 10-track length.
Khouri’s music, according to Rough Trade’s press release, is born of “displacement and perennial outside status”, a statement felt on The Salted Air’s best, quasi-devotional moments of longing and loss. It’s a shame, then, that Khouri’s commitment to experimentalism doesn’t quite reach the length and breadth of The Salted Air.