A.O. Gerber finds a tender high with Meet Me at the Gloaming

Each song seems to contain a universe of experience and memory, painful moments excavated with careful, precise words. The album is awash in cool synths and guitars, pleasant sounds to accompany the harsh truths uttered by Gerber.

Meet Me At The Gloaming is acutely self-aware without being self-loathing. The neutrality of Gerber’s tone is salient amongst the wash of watery instrumentation, her deep introspection more narrative than judgmental. On “Mount Washington Phone Company” she states her shortcomings as facts: “Fill me up / I never know how to say enough.” She writes as if she were watching herself live her life, passive but wholly conscious; she parses her experiences without any promise to change. It would seem that Gerber is still discovering impressions of the past she writes about, like bruises from forgotten impacts.

Working again with co-producer Madeline Kenney, Gerber turns towards layered production to juxtapose her vulnerable vocals. The weft of electronic and acoustic elements is uncompromising, somehow totally devoted to both styles. Recorded in Kenney’s home studio on evenings and weekends, the record is imbued with the precious quality of limited time. The care taken by Gerber and Kenney to create such enveloping soundscapes pays off tenfold in the cohesion of the record, the signature that seems to grace every song.

Gerber refuses to come to conclusions on Meet Me At The Gloaming. Like its namesake, this record is ephemeral, an infinity in twelve songs. She is tender with herself and with her ghosts, acknowledging and conceding and accepting. She finds comfort in the in-between moments, in the solidity of history and the ambiguity of what is to come.