LAURA MEADE

The Most Dangerous Woman In America DOONE RECORDS

IZZ vocalist returns with rebellion and reinvention in mind.

Presented against backdrop of her own personal health struggles, Laura Meade’s last album, Remedium, was an understandably reflective and fragile affair. Three years on, this follow-up is an equally deep and absorbing piece of work, but one that pointedly looks outward with wide eyes and intensity of purpose. With its underlying themes of defiance in the face of adversity, via the amplifying of female voices silenced by history, The Most Dangerous Woman In America is both vigorously timely and gently subversive.

With only occasional flashes of the claustrophobic intimacy that might be expected from an album recorded in lockdown, this is a release dominated by big, adventurous songs with coolly intricate arrangements and Meade’s angelic sonority a vivid and irresistible focal point. To some extent it inhabits the kind of artful, elaborate pop territory that Steven Wilson has been proselytising about in recent times: both sparkling opener Leaving and the shimmering, skittering

Burned At The Stake are masterclasses in succinctness, but with an absurd number of inspired sonic touches and core melodies that seem to hang in the air long after the songs end.

Iconoclast is a serene but unsettling ballad, seemingly recounting a tale of exploitation and innocence lost, with Meade a detached but benevolent narrator. Its graceful, Moogaugmented denouement is a truly spine-tingling moment, and the perfect segue into the quietly seething End Of The Road In Hollywood, wherein a propulsive beat and some wonderfully Joe Jackson-esque piano glide through billowing clouds of psychedelic mist, on their way to another earworm chorus. In contrast, Doesn’t Change A Thing is a disorientating chamber pop trip with a loping mid-section, rippling electroindustrial beats and a final flurry of harpsichord.

In terms of all-out prog, the title track delivers on all fronts. Across its supremely gripping eight minutes, Meade and John Galgano surf across multiple textures and tones, from elegiac, twinkly-eyed post-rock to bursts of Gentle Giant-esque angularity to an amorphous, ambient fog with a glitchy, stuttering Meade emerging from its depths, armed with lethal lines like ‘I can’t find quiet in a quiet place’ and a wild vocal reprise of ‘burn at the stake’. The Shape Of Shock provides some tense but tender respite, before mutating into an startling crescendo of swirling trance synths, and back again, with effortless grace; Forgive Me is all pitch-black melodrama, jabbing violins and slick but jarring detours. Tell Me, Love delivers the album’s sole moment of raw vulnerability, before a synth solo spirals off into the ether and Meade exits, sounding a little heartbroken but ultimately unstoppable.

BOTH VIGOROUSLY TIMELY AND GENTLY SUBVERSIVE.