This works especially well on “Carnival,” where her barely-there whisper wends its way through the song’s wells of resignation and hits emotive peaks along the way. Primarily though, Echo is left to Sparke’s solo turns with the slightest of accompaniment. The mournful tone of Beck’s Sea Change album comes to mind. The opening “Colourblind,” where a fuller sound is present courtesy of most of Big Thief’s residual members, is paced by a tambourine clack and Sparke’s achingly spare vocals. That’s not to say that all of Echo makes for an oppressive listen. Lenker’s abysskiss is a good jumping off point, though Sparke’s fixation with death is of the more relational kind.
Not so much from Lenker’s hand in the recording, though she and Big Thief producer Andrew Sarlo are given credit, but more that Sparke’s tonal content and disposition err to the darker side. Though much publicized, Sparke’s time spent with Big Thief’s Adrienne Lenker no doubt colors the arrangements here. While on the slow-to-unfold “Wolf,” Sparke plays supplicant to an unattainable lover.
At the album’s darkest, Starke doubles down on tracks like “Bad Dreams,” where ominous signs of “blood on my horizon” foretell of a soured relationship and are accompanied by a finger-picked swirl of psychedelic notes. Much like the image on the cover, Echo ’s landscapes are stark, desolate, and hostile to those who wander through. They say a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, and whether Australian songwriter Indigo Sparke is destined to a star-crossed fate or not, her own given name certainly invokes the mood for her Sacred Bones debut.
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