Since Avi C. Engel’s 2020 release, A New Skin, the artist formerly known as Clara Engel has been a constant in the new music sphere, releasing four albums in as many years.
The lighter tones of Dressed in Borrowed Light (20201) were a gentle segue from A New Skin, while Their Invisible Hands (2022) and Sanguinaria (2023) saw the Toronto songwriter dial into to what many would consider the realm of ‘long-form’ by modern day standards.
Too Many Souls, Engel’s third release in as many years for Newcastle-based label Cruel Nature Records, is one of the dreamiest affairs the songwriter has delivered. At seven tracks under 35 minutes, Engel’s shorter offerings in songcraft are a timely welcome and, sonically at least, are a new chapter in their story.
With opening song Hold This Flame, it sees Engel emerging from a cloudy void. They haven’t sounded so spectre-like, with new layered atmospheres not a world away from Marissa Nadler’s landmark album, July. It’s simply one of Engel’s most magical moments caught on tape.
On Ladybird, What’s Wrong?, once again Engel finds refuge in the skeletal folk aesthetic that has served them well for so long. And with a droning uncurrent to match its dread-inspired themes, Ladybird, What’s Wrong? is a song scorched by the campfire flames (“Ladybird what’s wrong? / Is it the atomic bomb? / Or all the poison leeching into the sea?”)
Avi C. Engel - Too Many SoulsThe environment has been a vital backdrop to Engel’s songs, and that doesn’t change on Too Many Souls. The ethereal one-two of The Oven Bird’s Song and Without Any Eyes sees a raft of animals not limited to wild cats and birds form a crucial chronicle. A fantastical outer world that takes the listener to a place beyond the power, money and greed which blights the one we currently inhabit.
Whilst some may view it as escapist, Engel’s songs feel more like a back-to-basics old world approach. Engel has employed bespoke and traditional instrumentation throughout the years, and while the effects of the melodica and gudok have been fleeting influences during Engel’s previous releases, on Too Many Souls they become an integral part, featuring heavily on the cracked blues of Breadcrumb Dance and Woolly Mammoth.
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Where the former is concerned, perhaps Engel hasn’t displayed such biting cynicism (“What a crock is alchemy / Sure the are worlds I cannot see” and “Bureaucracy is such a headache / How many gods used to run this place / Threw up their hands went into real estate.”
Engel has always been a straight shooter, and here the voice of a disgruntled underground musician is heard. In what could be construed as questioning the methods and means of metrics and release campaigns driven by the sanitised and soulless PR machine, it’s a conversation many are afraid to have. However, here Engel scratches beneath the surface of it (“I do to ride this wave / Tread softly and misbehave“).
With Wayfaring Stranger, Engel ends Too Many Souls with an instrumental that slowly guides out of the artist’s sound world and back into the bleak realities of the daily grind. It feels like an intentional move and a good one at that, culminating in an album that could be considered an outlier in comparison with Engel’s recent works. Too Many Souls is a good one, too, and until next time, it will be interesting to see where Avi C. Engel takes us next.
Too Many Souls is out now via Somnimage (CD) / Cruel Nature Records (Cassette). Purchase from Bandcamp.
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