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An overwhelming sense of vitality emanates from Skybelly’s second album. Swapping the ethereal synths for distorted guitar, writer-producer Sara constructs a brand-new universe to play in. ‘Vella is a whore, an assassin, and a goddess,’ she says.
The songs unfold as journeys, sliding in loose waves with shifting tempos and unpredictable structures. Sara is a master of dynamics, alternating between the soft and loud, fast and slow, tender and feral. ‘On a moonlit night / All the world was quiet / I fell ill again / Coughing up blood and serpents’ she whisper-sings in Eternal Summer, before launching into a Cobain-esque growl, ‘And I know you love me/ But it’s not enough/ I want to know God.’
If A Space Tramp Odyssey explored the fragility of life, Vella is an adventure in the unmitigated power of love and death. ‘I am a fury/ I am a daughter of the night/ I am a banshee/ I can devour or ignite,’ she sings on Persephone, guitars soaring across a psychedelic desert. There's a sense of wind and sand in the guitar - a desert-like wildness that you can almost taste.
Vella is a record designed for movement, to feel the strength in one’s body, one’s core — and as Sara sings on the title track — ‘soul of your soul of your soul’.
There is a point midway through the record where Sara unleashes the full intensity of her power. It comes in Vervain, a track that is equally thrilling and terrifying. ‘She rides/ It’s her sky/ Her stomach/ Her spell/ Sunbeams on gumtrees/ Vervain on bookshelves.’ She is defiant and gloriously so. There are flashes of Sonic Youth and Nick Cave in her composition and lyricism, but the meat of her offering is uniquely hers. Sara wrote, recorded, mixed, and produced every song on the record, and each track oozes with her style.
Guitarist Tarryn Benson-Smith balances delicate motifs and screeching solos: the end of & It All Falls Down is particularly invigorating - it would be a fitting soundtrack to the end of the world. But if anyone could rebuild it, it would be bassist Christine Yannopoulos and drummer Dan Hambrook. They hold the fort with tight grooves and thunderous double kicks, fulfilling their mission to rattle bones and shake up souls.
But for as much bone-shaking rock that Skybelly offers, they submit the supernatural and reflective in equal measure. ‘Conquering suicide at the masquerade ball/ A stiletto heel in the neck of a black dog/ Add some vibrato for the underside of love,’ Sara intones on the final track, Queen of Death. Enchanted synths unfold around her. It is a spacious and delicate ending to a record dedicated to the most impenetrable mysteries of life.
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