It’s comforting for many people to think of the world of music in terms of the three minute pop song but there is more than that out there and some of it takes shelter in the art pop genre. With a song in her heart and her heart in her songs, Jewelia – formerly of Romania but now located in Englandshire – seems right at home with the theatrical excesses so often regarded as part and parcel of this genre with her EP “Monsters” being no less than piano powered fairy tales infused with the kind of romanticism that once cause the masses to become enthralled with the deity that is Kate Bush.
Jewelia, consequently, does not lack a sense of the dramatic and, with the kind of scaled up and scaled out arrangements that sometimes disguise her rather dark poetic intentions, she throws her all into a successful attempt at artistic purity with “Charon” being the first song to pick up the baton and take late night misadventures to an almost spiritual level. “Masks and Scars”, however, is the song that really stokes the flames of passion with a trip towards the theatre pretty much inevitable as the lyrics simultaneously confide “… stars collide every time a soldier falls”. You can see the big picture now. Then, as if to reinforce those very dramatic motivations, the neo classical melancholy of “Sail Away” climbs the big ballad mountain and advertises Jewelia’s true intentions to the world.
As with all things of value, only time will tell if Jewelia will become a treasure but those of you who might want to be considered connoisseurs might want to make that all important investment now.
Available from Bandcamp.