Gothic grandeur anchors Jorja Chalmers second outing Midnight Train

Meticulous melancholia that lay the groundwork for her 2019 solo debut Human Again; synth scanning gloom-pop that has found a natural home on the dark wave favouring Italians Do It Better imprint.

The Melbourne-hailing, Margate-residing composer’s songwriting writhes with nerve-rattlingly polished mystique on Midnight Train. Born out of the seemingly interminable lockdown engulfing the UK last winter, Chalmers sought inspiration in the seasonally protracted nights - nocturnal cover that inescapably leads the mind to trail into sombre reflection and psychological doubt. Autumnal in its brooding, subconscious-scouring state, a deep dream diving fog envelops the record; Chalmers winding through lavishly macabre art-pop architecture - cinematic scope aptly mixed by David Lynch’s sound engineer Dean Hurley.

Reality and ethereality are juxtaposed, the social expectations placed on women not shied away from; an awareness explored from the outset with “Bring Me Down” in its focus on capitulation to an idealistic, Stepford Wives-veering sense of domestic existence. The latter track’s mesmeric synth pairs with aloofly despatched vocals in an icily ennuied emotional front, fantastically sinister instrumentals at its base. “Rabbit In The Headlights” recalls the gravity-defying enchantment of Kate Bush and Victoria Legrand, while the bravado of “Boadicea” barricades itself in tremoring electronic heft, suggestive of early Enya. Parallels are further drawn with Ferry’s Bête Noire, most pointedly in the form of “Nightingale” - a detached elusiveness further shared with “I’ll Be Waiting”, which would fit neatly amongst the work of labelmates Chromatics.

Gothic grandeur anchors the album’s thirteen tracks, a fear-stirring finesse, at its zenith on “The Wolves Of The Orangery”, appropriately penned following a show at the Palace of Versailles. A rendition of The Doors classic “Riders On The Storm” similarly aligns with the cavernous, smoke-filled ambience Chalmers perfects elsewhere in her own material. Midnight Train hurtles through this topography, enticingly sleek yet fraught with an air of uncontrollable menace, a duality that Chalmers reigns over with hypnotic artistic precision.