Glorious Heights is a record that is built around Montaigne’s inimitable voice. Pretty much everything else created with the goal of featuring her vocals in a variety of contexts, in an effort to show off her vocal skillset. The title track Glorious Heights kicks things off with such incredible intensity and emotion, and majestic percussion leads into orchestral instrumentation including complex strings and horns. It’s truly a grandiose start for the singer – but it is truly apt given the title of the album.
There’s a real danger that after the energy of the first single, there could be nowhere for Montaigne to go on the rest of the record. Instead there is plenty of contrast and some real exploration of different styles and contexts for her stunning voice to be situated in. Containing the already released singles In The Dark, Clip My Wings and Because I Love You, the album is almost surprisingly well-balanced – and there’s even significant contrast within sections of individual tracks themselves.
Till It Kills Me is another highlight; and it kicks off with Montaigne giving absolutely everything, as she belts out just about every note in her impressive range. Within the same song though, she also shows an ability to take things back a notch with a bridge section that tapers to almost a whisper yet retains a strong melodic feeling.
Leading into the back end of the record – there’s this incredible interlude track that – although it’s supposed to simply be a bridge between sections of the LP; is actually a climax in itself. Going into the release of this record most knew to expect Montaigne to show off everything she’s capable of in terms of vibrato, range and other expressive vocal techniques.
But Come Back To Me – Interlude is an incredible, ethereal effort with minimal instrumentation that gives a peak into what our girl may sound like as an acoustic artist. This leads into Come Back To Me proper – which also features some gorgeous piano-vocals interplay, from these two songs we get a completely different; almost unheard side to the Sydney singer.
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‘Glorious Heights’ is out August 5th, pre-order it here.
