There’s something deeply mysterious about the way Cara Potiker arranges the layers of evocative atmospheres across her new album Poet Lies. Take for example the lead single “Hailey Moon.” Without overtly hazy elements the synths flow effortlessly together to enshroud her sultry vocals in a dreamlike resonance. Slowly rising and falling drones and sparkling synth blossoming and fading over a steady beat that never seems to direct the pace but marks the time. All while Potiker seems to sing about tentatively opening up to someone in spite of one’s own flaws and weaknesses that one has had to harbor from other people for an extended period of time and how even exposing these things to anyone outside of your own head can be perilous because many if not most people lack the sensitivity and grace to respect vulnerability and trauma in a productive manner. But in this song Potiker appears to acknowledge that those “scars” and fears that one might think one has hidden from other people can be challenging or impossible to completely conceal and that maybe it might be better to operate knowing that to be the case and accept the possibility and perhaps inevitability of being hurt and even to be understood but that taking that risk might be the first step in getting to a place of greater personal strength. The gorgeous and cool luminosity of the composition of this song places it in the realm of shoegaze and dream pop but also emotionally in those psychic spaces that Julee Cruise expressed so well in her own dark pop confections of regret, resignation, despair and hope. Listen to “Hailey Moon” on YouTube and follow moondaddy at the links below. Poet Lies released via Volar Records on August 18, 2023.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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