Silhouette. Lili Grace

Recently I mentioned Lili Grace in a review of Midnight Sister's new album, 'Painting The Roses'. That album contained some musical curveballs and if you liked those surprises in the music, I can warmly recommend Silhoutte by Belgian duo Lili Grace.

The album was released officially somewhere in November of 2020, but as Lili Grace wanted to focus fully on its home country Belgium first, we only really got the chance to get acquainted this month. A nice cd with a sober front was delivered in my mailbox and from that moment onwards the adventure called Silhouette began in earnest. That last word is the right one to use as listening to Silhouette takes dedication and determination. Lili Grace truly takes a listener on an adventure and throws in some musical curveballs into the whole to make the listener confused and gets him/her on the wrong foot not by accident but clear design. Nothing is what it seems at first.

This introduction was written purely after listening to the music a few times and under different circumstances. After it became clear to me that I wanted to write about this album, because it demands writing, despite being so deeply estranging at times, only then I started to read the accompanying bio. It was then that the word accident got a literal meaning, as I'll explain below. I needed to write, despite and because of beauty colliding with deep emotions that seem to derail the music beyond recognition. Silhouette is not just an album. For that too much is happening.

Silhouette is the debut album of the sisters Dienne and Nelle Bogaerts from Belgium. The album was more or less created in 2017 and ready in 2018. Why it took two more than two years before it was released, I do not know. There was an extreme necessity and urgency to create this album: the car accident of their brother, who wound up in a coma in hospital, alive but from this world, a silhouette of the man he used to be. The accident, the hospitalisation and the effect on the sisters Bogaerts is what this album is about. A reflection on a dark episode in their lives. As music history attests to, the darkest experiences can lead to the best music. And I have to conclude that Silhouette can be added to that long list of records.

This starts with the angelic harmonies of Dienne and Nelle Bogaerts. You find them all over the album. The two sing together superbly and range from angels to demons, witches, little harpies and back. The music is just as far out. An almost classical ballad is thrown before the bus by a totally electronic song with estranging but solid beats. It may also be that a song gets a Kate Bush circa 'The Dreaming' treatment with even more estranging elements in the music than Kate presented the world with sort of out of the blue in 1982.

To come back to Midnight Sister. When all is said and done there's no comparison. Lili Grace goes so far beyond conventions in music, there from Belgium, right?, that they are moving towards a league of their own. I fell from surprise into surprise per song. Goat Girl releases a new album next week that is announced as moving beyond conventions as well. Watch this space whether they make it here and see who has gone out "furthest".

Can I call Silhouette an extremely good album? I simply cannot say yet. For that the album sends me off in too many directions for most of the time. What I can tell you is that it moves me on several levels and that is a where building a relationship with an album in most cases starts. I'm certainly interested to learn where the two of us will go in the coming weeks and months.

Wo.

You can listen to and order Silhouette here:

https://liligrace.bandcamp.com/album/silhouette

or listen to our Spotify Playlist to find out what we are writing about:

https://open.spotify.com/user/glazu53/playlist/6R9FgPd2btrMuMaIrYeCh6?si=KI6LzLaAS5K-wsez5oSO2g