Generally art may be considered a commerce with darkness, with obscurity; meant to grip or mesmerize, and rarely, if ever, inform. Noted singer and musician Christina Carter's Original Darkness, however, is not a giving up of the self to anonymity, to some prehuman milieu of the elemental, but an aperture to her interiority, to her own stirring about a primordial existential attitude. As such it's billed as "honestly human"; in betraying herself Carter would have it that certain inner recesses of ourselves are made more plain or intelligible.
Carter's intentions at first come across as somewhat misguided; and her strategy of countering the play of forms with the politeness of the heart is a tad naive. The album is also rather limited in that it's almost wholly caught up in trying to provide listeners with little more than mirror images of themselves. It becomes something of a requirement, then, that one enters into an engagement (indulgence?) with such an explicit economy.
Grievances aside, Carter does carry it off well. Her trepidation's don't remain inert and simply aspire to life, but often embody it, and on pieces such as "In Prisoned Body" and "Suffering", with her tender and strong voice, they're fleshed out with real forcefulness, too. Where the work attains its greatest success, though, is in the framing of these concerns. In general, austere guitar plucking is steadily stacked into complete phrases. There is also the gleaming ping of keyboard chords as they nestle together in harmonies on "Re-found Mary" or unfurl in broad strokes alongside ripples of heavenly ascension to form a cloud-staring space during "Capable of Murder". In both cases, the instruments impinge on and tickle the senses while simultaneously displacing Carter's figure, creating a sort of second dress or shadow that haunts and breaks up the nakedness of her lyricism. In this light, Carter's storytelling psychology seems less than necessary; her arrangements pared down and refined as they are, capitalize with some consistency on the harmonious interplay of all elements.
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