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Jul 21, 2023

L Con

L Con The Isolator idée fixe (IF042) 12 May 2023 Lisa Conway’s (aka L Con –

L Con

The Isolator

idée fixe (IF042)

12 May 2023

Lisa Conway's (aka L Con – recently featured here) The Isolator is an adventurous foray into self-interrogation, where the composer delves into the implications of her dual citizenship on her identity. The Swiss-Canadian singer-songwriter started working on the album at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, when – like many musicians – she found herself "navigating a calendar otherwise wiped blank". Conway took up online piano lessons, working with a teacher that encouraged her to lean into what felt comfortable, and she explains: "I finally gave myself permission to fully live in sound worlds and lean into writing tendencies that are very instinctual and restorative to me."

The album is bookended by Alphorn Tape Loop (I & II), which gently eases in/and out the listener into/and from the Swiss alpine setting of The Isolator. The composition is at once comforting, sweet and dramatic, perfectly setting the scene before being greeted by Heimatort, a spacious sound design piece that centres around a circling Prophet synthesizer that mirrors Philip Glass's droning piano compositions. The title was inspired by a line in Conway's Swiss passport indicating one's "home place" or "place of origin". The minimalist instrumentation allows Conway's lyrics to take up space, and she sings: "my mother told me there's a place / if I’m not enough, I’ll be enough / maybe the valley knows my name."

Hold, is an intimate meditation on the duality of belonging to two places at once and on holding "one in the other and the other inside / you’re both one and the other and the other in sight", swelling to a big outro towards the end, urging the musician and the listener to let go. The balancing of two identities slowly tilts over on Appear, where Victoria Cheong and Isla Craig lend their vocals to the song, proving that introspection does not need to be done wholly in isolation. They sing: "you say you like all that you see in me".

The next track, What If Heidi Likes The City?, is a reference to "a 19th-century Swiss children's story Conway has known most of her life". But whereas Heidi in the original story missed the countryside and craved to go back, Conway proposes a different scenario: Heidi went to the city, liked it, and changed. It's an upbeat song, accompanied by playful percussive elements, such as handclaps, but touches on the theme of loneliness and alienation that come with emigration. If Heidi goes back to the Alps, what happens? Conway sings: "bet they don't really know you’ve changed, not stayed the same".

Ordinary Girl touches on the desire to be someone else while staying yourself. Conway provides the listener with a description of the "ordinary extraordinary woman" she would want to be: "heard she sings in perfect tune / four languages and a bookshelf of poetry!" This song stands out due to its warm, subtle saxophone riffs, weaving in pedal steel and masterful percussion.

The title track, The Isolator, seems like the most boilerplate song on the album. At first, starting out as a piano ballad, it builds into a string sweeping string ensemble when the drums and the backing vocals come in. It's hard to describe the melancholy, the regret at a future that hasn't yet happened, and the nostalgia for a past that never took place without listening to those strings. Do yourself a favour. Go listen.

The next song, Too Much, circles around and around synth drones with one line: "I keep saying that it's too much", until it takes off when the strings come in. This song is an otherworldly experience, with sci-fi sounds finishing the track. Conway closes out with Alphorn Tape Loop ii, reminding the listener that not only is she a songwriter, but she is also a talented composer and sound artist, manipulating and processing the tape in a way that keeps the listener engaged for the full seven minutes of the track.

But Conway's last lyrical message sits in the nihilist A Big Pile of Nothing, where she ruminates not just on who she is but on what is. It's a brave admission, closing out an album with a song that asks: "am I missing, am I gone?" It seems to say that even after the introspection of an album, Conway doesn't have the answers. It's an honest, relatable, and rare statement to get from a songwriter. Perhaps that, more than anything, is the mark of a great artist.

Order via Bandcamp

Website: https://www.lconofficial.com/

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Erika Severyns studied music in London and has recently moved to Berlin to live an artsy, bohemian life, and pick up either yoga or chain-smoking (it can still go either way). She writes pieces about music and creativity, as well as folk songs about daily occurrences like heartbreak, disappointment, and rocking up at men's houses at two A.M. with mayo stains on her jeans.