For her second full-length, Tania Bowers doesn’t mess with the captivating formula that made her an underground success story. She and her collaborators stick with a lush backdrop of reverberating downtempo beats and electronically-processed atmospherics that comfortably cushion her warm kitten’s tongue of a singing voice.
The audible shifts are more for clarity and volume, amping up the tones so they are little more present and harder to let sit in the background. They allow the drum sounds and dubby bass of “Lost In It” pulse forward and the twinkling mix of music box and vibraphone that fritters away in “Wonder Stranger” shimmer a little more brightly. Bowers responds with vocal turns that breath and purr and whisper hauntingly.
It’s an approach that runs counter to the cover art, which would seem to cast Via Tania as some sort of new wave revivalism diva with an attitude. In reality, the album is much cozier and earthen than that. It’s a stiff drink that warms you from the inside out.