Greetings

Who is Isabelle Lewis, anyway?

What kind of music does she make? Is she an opera singer? Does she write pop songs? Does she compose ethereal ambient soundscapes? Does she play chamber music on the violin? Is she producing dark, electronic beats?

Well… yes. But Isabelle Lewis is not so much a person as a project. Isabelle’s debut album, Gree=ngs, credits a trio of composer–performers at its heart: producer Valgeir Sigurðsson, vocalist Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe, and violinist Elisabeth Klinck. The sound of the elusive Isabelle Lewis is heard most clearly in the push and pull between them, the three-way tension that gives the album its musical and emo=onal drive.

Each of the three brings more to the collabora=on than those epithets might imply. Elisabeth’s solo performance prac=ce incorporates composi=on, improvisa=on, live electronics, and a close command of bowing and fingering techniques that make her fiddle sing, whisper or whistle as required. Benjamin is a self-taught countertenor - keening, crooning, and swelling to a voluptuous sensuality—but also an interdisciplinary stage director and performer. Well known for his work as a producer and studio collaborator, and as a composer of scores for film and stage, Valgeir’s solo discography interweaves me=culously crahed electronics, drones, noise, and other digital elements with acous=c instruments and vocals recorded with naked, unflinching clarity.

But the extravagant theatricality Benjamin brings to the aptly =tled “Drama”—also featuring a heroic violin solo from Elisabeth—grapples against the thudding bass of the implacable digital backdrop. On “Mother, Shelter Me” Valgeir’s austere and detailed produc=on throws the hushed violin and vocals into stark relief. The result is an exquisitely uncanny juxtaposi=on of past and present, human and mechanical, like a Rococo treasure viewed under cold fluorescent lights, or an 18th-century automaton slowly opening its clockwork eyes.

Even the lyrics seem somehow out of =me. On “O Solitude,” Benjamin goes so far as to quote an en=re song by the first great English opera composer, Henry Purcell, verba=m. No stranger to Purcell’s music, which has made its way into Benjamin’s theatrical produc=ons as well, here Isabelle Lewis removes Purcell’s melodies and harmonies and sets the text, Katherine Phillips’s 17th century transla=on of a poem by Antoine Girard de Saint-Amant, to new music whose heightened, archaic character nevertheless seems haunted by Baroque ghosts.

Throughout the album, the outsized emo=ons and =meless archetypes of Benjamin’s lyrics feel like relics from some half-forgolen past—from the neatly rhymed couplets of “Fisherman,” a seemingly straighworward (but s=ll somewhat askew) character study, to the abstrac=on of “Moonshell,” whose words seem like the fragments of some ancient, lost lament. It is just another of many ways in which Isabelle Lewis carefully distorts the listener’s no=ons of =me. On a more micro level, =me can stop for a moment of weightless, drihing ambience, and then plunge forward as the cloud of harmonies suddenly lock into tempo with the drop of the bass or the change of a chord. Or else that weightless moment is allowed to be, as in the aptly named

prologue and epilogue to these Gree=ngs (“Voicemail”/“…and farewell”), or in the inters==al tracks that bind the album together, connec=ng its drama=c peaks with expanses of medita=ve stasis.

The album as a whole is elegantly shaped, swelling from an in=mate, interpersonal statement into something deeper and more spacious. The first half of the album leans slightly towards self-contained pop songcrah and =cking beats, while side B jumps off from “O Solitude” into the almost symphonic grandeur of songs like “Moonshell” or the instrumental “Not the water, air, or the dirt.”

But as it progresses, the contrasts only grow more sublime: an=que and postmodern, human and machinelike. The ominous weight of the droning sub-bass and trombone (guest player Helgi Hrafn Jónsson) only makes the interplay between vocals and violins (guest player Daniel Pioro joining Elisabeth) seem more delicate and vulnerable. The ethereal string tremolos of “Moonshell” seem to pull against the heavy, shuddering electronics and layers of crooning vocals.

And that, in short, is where you will find Isabelle Lewis. Like an ancient stone archway, or a delicate house of cards, the architecture of Gree=ngs is held together by the tension between opposing forces. Not just in Elisabeth’s playing, Benjamin’s singing, or Valgeir’s arrangements and produc=on but in the conflict and contrast that generates the synergy between them.

Oh—Isabelle says hi, by the way. She’s looking forward to mee=ng you 

1 Voicemail 2 Mother, Shelter Me 3 Before Noon 4 Drama 5 Fisherman 6 O Solitude 7 Not the water, air, or the dirt 8 Dust That Floats 9 Moonshell 10 ...and farewell