Writing a review of an artist whose existence is wrapped up in a few songs, and whose titles have until now constituted a hypothetical EP, is a most intriguing mystery. Listening to the four compositions made available by Montana Rose on Bandcamp helps us to understand the author's intention: music as therapy. From Christchurch in the south of New Zealand (a small town surrounded by green hills and mountains) comes a timeless music, escaped from a dream.
Let's take things from the beginning, with the release of Candy in March 2024. The voice is supported by a frail guitar, whose chords are strummed by Ethan McIntyre, probably someone close to Montana Rose. The composition is folk in style, recorded on the spot, and the affect is already very present. Words heal the wounds of the heart and soul, but that's not enough. These few sweets have the flavour of spleen, childhood memories, fleeting visions in which we like to curl up.
It is through the piano that Montana Rose expresses everything she feels and conveys her perception of the world in the most touching way. Like Lingua Ignota or Emily Jane White, solitude has never been so beautiful. In Heaven Weeps, her crystalline, icy, flamboyant arpeggios convey the heavens' sadness for this world.
The functional principle of art is the personal ambition whose notions may ostensibly only be applauded by a small crowd, but this discretion is no less assumed. From his first name Montana, the universal link established with nature and transmitted from germ to blossom embodies this organic material. It's with I Know You're not Doing Well that the confidence takes on its full meaning, the text supporting the image that is gradually revealed, the lyrics are not just a warning but a recommendation, an introspection. It's this cold, luminous magnetism, this aura shrouded in a tiny light that unfolds its facets like the stained glass windows of a sacred edifice. It's a transition from childhood to acute awareness. The world is contained in each syllable, the words reconcile themselves, propelled by the poetic fulgurance of Childlike, an innate prosody inherited from a consciousness that is no longer a succession of linear events but a continuous flow of fevers and visions. A vocation whose gentleness does not neglect its intensity. In this constitutive process, affirmation is never central but rather a constant questioning, in Small everything is concentrated in a central point, from a chamber to the echoes outside, the wave propagates, the repetitive piano parts embellish themselves as Montana's voice is adorned with a totally mastered reverb. I urge you to listen carefully to this intuitive music capable of triggering all sorts of images. It's a pleasure to come back to again and again, just long enough to absorb each measure. There's no denying that Montana Rose has an undeniable musical personality and talent, far removed from the ambient formalism.
