Glass Skin – Raina Wiles (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

Pop can take different forms, so many in fact that the term becomes so vague as to not really have much descriptive value. And if such a label, for many, evokes high beats-per-minute counts and obvious hooks, the sort of thing that those of a particular inclination might call “bangers,” it is to the other end of the pop spectrum that we find Raina Wiles.

Glass Skin is a collection of songs made at a place where pop drifts into a dreamier place, seduced by neo-soul sweetness, music where drive is replaced by delicacy, and poise rather than pace is the order of the day.

The title track kicks things off and, in doing so, perfectly sets the tone for the EP to follow. It is an understated balladic song, lyrically vulnerable and musically spacious, a melodic and mellifluous song running on the most minimal, ticking digital beats.

“Baby Blue Light” is even more relaxed, taking that spaciousness to even greater heights, something that creates an experience that runs on atmosphere and gentle anticipation, melodic moods interspersed only by gossamer sonics.

Relatively speaking, “Longing to Be Held” runs on more sonic weight, but not too much that it moves out of this magical musical territory that Raina has made her own. Again, lyrically, she wears her heart on her sleeve, a heart that feels near to breaking every time the chorus comes around. “In My Bed” is the sound of modern dream-soul, a song that takes all that is fantastic about that genre and boils it down to its most essential qualities, something less about the music itself and more about how it makes you, the listener, feel.

The EP ends on “I Let My Emotions Get the Best of Me,” a song which puts Raina Wiles at the end of a long line of iconic sounds and classic singers, from 40’s jazz divas to 50’s torch song blues singers to 70’s soul sensations to 90’s pop-soul revivalists to more recent neo-soulsters. It just captures something timeless, but also timely. Timely because such songs, ones about love and loss and longing and life, never go out of fashion because they speak so readily to who we are and to the trials and tribulations of the human heart.

It is remarkable how much can be said with so little. Here we have five tracks which are as much about space as they are actual instrumentation, about atmosphere as they are lyrics. Yet that understatement is overwhelming; that quietness speaks volumes.