“Starlings and Crows,” the new album by Chloë March, is an autumnal song cycle full of rich electronics, dark honeyed vocals and startling touches, like crystalline piano chord progressions and shimmering autoharp strums. It’s richly atmospheric, full of nature imagery and Romantic (with a capital R) reveries. Everything note played or sung is placed with jewel-like precision. It’s a song suite, but there are highlights, like the tentative piano ballad “All Things Good” or the cinematic blur of “To a Place,” and “Remember That Sky” could be an Adult Alternative single. It reminds one of the misty electronic pastorals of Virginia Astley’s “Hope in a Darkened Heart,” though March has a plaintive alto compared to Astley’s boy soprano tones. Other references: “The Sensual World,” by Kate Bush, “Secrets of the Beehive” by David Sylvian or the 4AD era of folk singer Heidi Berry.
–Craig Laurance Gidney
