Two years in the modern musical cycle might seem like a long time, but only because everything happens so quickly now and the creative process seems so fast-paced and transient. While this may have an upside, it undoubtedly means that music, once dropped, needs more time to pool and percolate in the public conscience and isn’t allowed time to age and become part of the musical backdrop.
So, it’s great to see Raven Ives returning to her EP from 2022, Dancing Shadows, to help give it the momentum and lease of life that it didn’t properly get the first time around. And so she should. It’s too good a collection of songs to be allowed to drift past, under the radar, and lost to history, especially as the two opening songs, “Rainy Day” and “Reprieve,” have since become two of her best-loved songs.
As this gorgeous brace of songs demonstrates, she is a sonic world of dark and delicious pop, ambient tones and cinematic sophistication, gentle, seductive flows, and neo-classical grace, which she terms dark gaze. This term is perfect for the music found here.
In a suite of fantastic songs, it is perhaps “Nebula” that catches my ear most – chiming sonar-like sonics cutting through floating atmospheres, maybe inspired by the distant constellations from which it takes his name, and tracks such as “Firelights,” which, in an ideal world would be set for a surefire run to the top of the pop charts.
If the pop charts and the mainstream world seem to be currently missing the smarts and sophistication to make it the appealing place it once was, then Dancing Shadows is just the sophisticated shot in the arm it has been looking for.