Rachael Dadd

We Resonate
Talitres

We Resonate is an imaginative cluster of oddball pop that pursues spontaneity and contradiction at the very boundaries of the genre. Executed with melodic intuition and percussive flair, the record uses all manner of unconventional instruments – typewriters, tap shoes, match boxes, even the heartbeat of Rachel Dadd’s unborn baby – to capture the playful ingenuity of a studio mess-about.

The singer’s beat-making is showcased on the artfully stuttering Make A Sentence, where waves of clacks and twangs become a defiant Merrill Garbus-esque collage. The frenetic pace of Dadd’s abandon does wane, dipping to reverent introspection on Tap the Sap and I Am Your Home.
This contrast of light and shade is underpinned by Dadd’s ensemble of experimenters, including Alessi Laurent-Marke and Japanese multi-instru- mentalist ICHI. Each adds unique colour to the singer’s most accomplished work to date – a challenging and often brutally bare record that breaks the conventions of pop to reassemble a sound of raw, jagged beauty. www.rachaeldadd.com.

Grace Caffyn