Nite Jewel – 'One Second Of Love' review
Defiantly uncool influences are currently hot pop property: recent brilliant records by Bon Iver, Destroyer and Chairlift have all dug up long, oft-forgotten relics of (generally) the 80s, and simultaneously made hipsters reconsider the output of bands like Chicago, Bruce Hornsby, and Aztec Camera. Accordingly, there should be no credibility danger in making a record that recalls Sade, Brian Eno’s ambient period and even Enya, and Nite Jewel, aka Los Angeles’ Ramona Gonzalez, would appear to agree – One Second of Love is steeped in lovers rock, washy minimal electronics and the occasional foray into the wind-chime new-age folk favoured by campervanned hippies in Glastonbury’s Healing Fields.
But where successful revivalists twist their source material, Gonzalez plays it completely straight, frequently leaving a sanitised sound that’s difficult to love. Occasionally, as on the title track, her chosen combination succeeds, delivering pleasingly unusual, glacial soul, but those pleasures are rare: most of One Second Of Love sounds like the hold music at the Holiday Inn – thin, distant and distracted.
4/10
