Elori Saxl | The Blue of Distance

By Justin Christopher Poulin, Contributor

There I was in an unfinished loft of a sad, rather dilapidated looking building amongst the myriad sad, rather dilapidated looking buildings in the artsy South End of Burlington, VT. Fresh out of college, this was one of my first shows at an otherwise undisclosed location where I barely knew anyone aside from the friend who invited me. What? A BYOB event? I was 22 and feeling so smug and embarrassingly cool.  That unbearable vanity melted away as soon as Alpenglow took the stage. Rich, vibrant folk rock filled the room like the dull stank of patchouli incense.  I had become stunned and hypnotized. I recall Graeme Daubert’s vaguely Pecknoldian vocal style, the folksy harmonies, and the impressive contributions of Elori Saxl, the banjo player.

I remember being there when the band went electric. Alpenglow had a bit of a homecoming at a local bar where they shared their new knowledge after relocating to the Big Apple. They were a City band now with a City sound (the Burlington-to-Brooklyn pipeline is real, folks). The update came as a surprise, albeit a good one. Saxl had traded in strings for synthesizers.

I hear that you and your band have sold your guitars and bought turntables.

I hear that you and your band have sold your turntables and bought guitars.

Wait

Where am I

Hold on, I just blacked out for a second.

Well, Saxl has done it again and confounded me with a suite of ambient and minimalist compositions completely out of left field.

The Blue of Distance is an album of many meanings. The namesake is a reference to Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost where the hue, in a literal sense, is color of mountains from afar, that when you get closer and closer, dissipates as if it was never there. For Solnit, blue is a reference to separation, to the liminal spaces between getting ‘there’ and becoming. It’s the color “of solitude and of desire, the color of there seen from here, the color of where you are not,” and it’s the “color of where you can never go.”

Saxl draws parallels to growing up “contemporaneously with the proliferation of the internet and new technology such as Google Maps, YouTube, and smartphones filled with photos and videos that allow us to access distant people and places without being physically present.” Talk about the Blue Light of Distance, amirite?

Ahem.

She goes on: “I was interested in understanding how the personal experience of memory formation may parallel humanity’s changing relationship with land through new technology that allows us access to a place or person without being physically present.”

In way, you can sort of hear this interweaving of organic and synthetic through the combination of synthesizers with woodwinds and strings. The album opens with warbling oscillations and a fog of gossamer strings before giving way to a sort of Reichian pulse of woodwinds on “Before Blue.” In fact, there are a lot of moments that call to mind the minimalist styles of Steve Reich or Philip Glass, and at times the entrancing elements of the works of Laurie Spiegel or Brian Eno.

“Blue” begins with rushing water and subaqueous rumblings that emerges into a gallop of strings and synths with a woozy portamento. There’s a lot of tension building here. The piece seems to climb with more instruments added into the mix before an abrupt end, but on the other side is the welcoming “Wave I,” which I actually quite appreciate for its wistful, nostalgic tone. The descending chord progression honestly feels more at home with a pop ballad than an ambient piece, but for that reason is very refreshing. The one lone bassoon (at least I think that’s bassoon, my ear for double-reed instruments ain’t what it used to be) plods along, conjuring up the idea of someone with their head in the clouds, caught in a fond memory of a time or place they can’t go back to. Maybe it’s a camp from their childhood, or a not-so-secret loft show from back in the day (see, I knew I’d tie it in somehow).

Right in the middle of the album we get the longest track, “Memory of Blue,” which, as the name implies, recalls the tension building on “Blue.” What is interesting is the first half of the album was written while in the Adirondacks during summertime, while the second half was written on an island on Lake Superior in winter. This second set of tracks almost seem to try to recall the first half—there are sonic similarities, but the icy distance is there. What we get, as a result, is an very meta concept to this album. The literal distance in time between tracks calls to mind the original, but never quite gets there. That’s some heady shit.  

The album closes with the title track, which has the cinematic feel of scanning an empty, frost-covered field with the natural expanse stretch far beyond into the horizon. It’s an ominous feeling, but also strangely comforting, like getting lost in a familiar place. The street is weird, but you’re in no real danger. The only thing between you and what you know is the distance of a few city blocks.

Getting back to Solnit, she points out a sort of paradox in this distance: “some things we have only as long as they remain lost, some things are not lost only so long as they are distant.” The feelings of loss run deep on The Blue of Distance. Whether it’s losing yourself in the woods to admire your surroundings without the urge to post it to social media, or recalling a moment lost in time, The Blue of Distance captures both quite beautifully.