As of today, Veronica Dajani has 25 monthly listeners on Spotify, and that fucking terrifies me. For the second time in my life (Inside Lleywn Davis was a brief first time) I was able to realise clearly that there are thousands of artists all around the world making music that will never be heard. Of course, this is because for every thousand unheard great artist there are a hundred thousand tone-deaf shit makers that flood an already saturated market and prevent most people from hearing one of the most beautiful albums I’ve heard all year in Veronica Dajani’s Memoirs.
I don’t know what it is about the album but it’s stuck with me from the minute I heard the first note. It’s recorded in such a way that every song sounds like you’re hearing someone practising on a piano from down a hall, with vocals that melt into the bare instrumentation until there almost barely inaudible. It gives her work a childish, innocent quality whilst also being haunting, even on a more upbeat song like Rebel in Disguise, and makes you feel nostalgia for a life you haven’t lived.
Lyrically she’s at her best on the song Lou’s Lament, with the simplicity of the rhythm and piano playing highlighting the beautifully childlike qualities of the album and pairing with the lyrics to make what feels like a woman feeling as if she’s a child in love again.
Perseverance is another beautiful track, which I am 90% sure is in another language, but with how the vocals are recorded you never really do know, it could even just be gibberish, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that it sounds amazing and explodes at the end into the closest Dajani ever comes to ‘rocking out’.
Personally, though I feel the best song she has put out is the instrumental Victory. Again, it has a childish air of simplicity and repetition but the piano playing and gradual layering of instruments is as close to perfect as anyone is ever going to get. The quality of the recording adds to the grandeur that comes at the end of the track which leaves the listener feeling a hopefulness for what’s to come, for Veronica Dajani and themselves.
After a quick look on both Instagram and Twitter I sadly wasn’t able to find any account that seemed to link to the artists Spotify, just a Bandcamp and a Facebook page, but I implore anyone that comes across this to please give her album a listen, it’ll be the most beautiful 19 minutes of your week. Even if that’s too much for you just try one song, maybe it won’t be for you and that’s okay, but this deserves to be heard more than anything I have ever written about or listened to this year. All I want is for this album to get a tiny fraction of the credit it deserves, and I hope that Dajani doesn’t become disheartened by the current lack of listeners, because if a sophomore effort is anything like her debut it should hopefully be enough to shine a well-deserved light on her work.
