Blue Girl Nice Day is the new album from La Faute, a dark, dreamy collection of songs delving into topics such as longing, betrayal, mourning, desire, and surface vs. depth. In French, the name La Faute means ‘the mistake’ or ‘the fault.’
Originally from Winnipeg, Canada, and now in Toronto, La Faute, aka Peggy Messing, is a multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter, and visual artist. And Blue Girl Nice Day reveals her sublime gifts.
Encompassing 11 tracks, the album begins with the title track, rolling out on low-slung, pensive guitar notes, followed by the entry of La Faute’s wistful, melancholic voice, suffusing the lyrics in shadows of gloom.
“Please don’t make a mistake / It’s going to hurt me more than you / The choices that I make / Let the current flow through.”
Speaking subjectively, entry points include “Watercolours,” riding a gently swaying rhythm with hints of Latin cadence as La Faute’s breathy vocals imbue the lyrics in soft, alluring timbres, at once beguiling, sensitive, and aching.
Talking about “Watercolours,” La Faute told Jenna Melanson, “I was partly thinking about movie scenes that I love that are covered in rain, like the doomed romance of ‘In the Mood for Love’ or the tears in the rain scene from ‘Blade Runner.’ Visually I’ve always been interested in how water makes everything blurry, borderless, and reflective. I’d been trying to paint as well, and I always struggle with watercolours because I never know if it’s going to turn out well, but that’s also what I love about them. I was also thinking about my relationship to music, how it’s kind of an obsessive, unrequited thing.”
“Let it Burn” travels on elegiac colors atop an edgy rhythm, exposing portentous sonic hues, emphasized by La Faute’s spectral voice. There’s an urgent, latent energy running through the tune, suppressed but smoldering with pressing weight.
The serpentine flow of “Magician’s Assistant,” accompanied by La Faute’s low, Siren-like voice, unveils a velvety darkness. Whereas “Lullaby” imminent and foreboding, exposes a rising psychic aura of stark black momentum.
A personal favorite, “I’m Finding Out” features brighter coloration tinted by tendrils of tonality suggesting the revelation of unwanted knowledge.
Simultaneously ghostly and superbly graceful, Blue Girl Nice Day establishes La Faute as an artist of transcendent ability.
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