Guitarist/filmmaker Sarah Lipstate's work as
Noveller evolved over the years from the slowly melting ambient drones of her earliest albums to increasingly complex instrumentals that moved with the intention and subtext of film soundtracks. Over the course of this evolution, Lipstate's heavily processed solo guitar developed into a voice of its own, taking steps up on collaborations with
Iggy Pop and
Lee Ranaldo and reaching new compositional highs on her 2017 album A Pink Sunset for No One.
Arrow continues that record's expanded approach to composition and finds Lipstate's filmic sounds at their most intense. The album was the first
Noveller set since Lipstate relocated from her longtime home in Brooklyn to Los Angeles. There's a sense of both discovery and disruption in these songs, reflecting the unknown factors of a cross-country move. The gentle "Pre-fabled" is trepidatious and cautious at first, Lipstate's guitar processed to sound like a flute. The song flutters shyly for a moment before a rush of dramatic bass opens the arrangement up, giving the sense of an inevitable change and the liberation one feels giving oneself over fully to that change. It's the music for a scene in a movie where the protagonist summons their courage and makes a leap of faith.
Noveller's sounds grew more and more cinematic with each record, and
Arrow revels in movie-ready tension and release more than any album before it. "Effektology" warps plinking guitar notes and waves of synth into interstellar sci-fi sounds, and "Canyons" moves between swells of dissonant noise and playful, happy melodies. The entire album feels at times like the lost soundtrack to a space exploration filmstrip, and in its weirder moments sounds like a psychedelic children's show from the '70s with Lipstate's buzzy guitar tones serenading dancing cartoon flowers. The effects-heavy guitar constructions of
Arrow are the most emotionally intense
Noveller material from Lipstate yet, making it easily one of her most expressive and fully formed statements to date. ~ Fred Thomas