Virginia Wing return with Ecstatic Arrow, an album which finds them in a
place of renewed strength, optimism and clarity.Recorded in Switzerland, in the
family home of longtime friend and collaborator Misha Hering within the
domesticity and gentle routine of communal life, the album represents a world as
predisposed to solemn introspection as it is to blithe conviviality. Ecstatic
Arrow borrows from the heterogeneous terrain of The Flying Lizard’s Fourth
Wall, the exuberant pop of Yellow Magic Orchestra and the playful sophistication
of Lizzy Mercier Descloux’s Press Colour, arriving at the evergreen
intersection of pop music and conceptual art. The resolute opener of Be Released
and album centre point The Female Genius pair resonant Fourth World
instrumentation with sonorous, loping drum patterns. Elsewhere, the sentimental
march of single The Second Shift plays out like an after-hours ballad
re-imagined by Wally Badarou and For Every Window There’s a Curtain is
coloured by the blue-lit haze of an Eventide warped tenor saxophone. Three
albums in, the voice of Alice Merida Richards is more compelling and expressive
than ever. The glacial deadpan of previous records has given way to a more
candid, self-possessed delivery, showing an appreciation for the humour and
tragedy
innate in the downtown Arcadia of Laurie Anderson, Robert Ashley or even Lynn
Goldsmith’s Will Powers. It’s with this voice that Richards outlines a
simple ideality that fortifies the entirety of Ecstatic Arrow – inequality
pervades, destructive behaviours are inherited and each subsequent generation
has to reconcile the debts of its precursor – yet a space exists
within ourselves and each other that houses a fact we must be reminded of –
we have the ability to choose. Even in moments of frustration; the ascerbic
eye-roll toward male entitlement, Glorious Idea or the world-weary Eight Hours
Don’t Make a Day, there persists a joy for living that refuses to be confined.
A depiction of a group finally at ease with itself, Ecstatic Arrow is a tribute
to the internal momentum that quietly guides us toward our destination.