Matteah Baim: Falling Theater

On Falling Theater I hear an aural focus, more of a balance between the music and her voice than on her previous, nonetheless captivating, records. Songs like “Good for Two” are arranged like she’s Nick Drake or a ballad singer of the fast – fitting, perhaps, for an album that wears a feeling of wistful timelessness on its cover, with its portrayal of shuttered movie palaces. Her voice is right there front and center, yet there’s still mystery in her singing and songs; a sense that her words hide more than they reveal. Overall the album has both a sense of doom and gloom and an intimate, candlelit feeling. On “All Night”, the music creeps forward like a ghost and so does Baim, sounding both gravely serious and somehow romantic. Intimacy is key to Falling Theater’s atmosphere, and a melancholy tranquility that lingers beyond the album’s brief confines.