Accompanied by strings, horns, and more, Haley Fohr has crafted her most expansive work to date, capturing a sprawl of emotions too complicated to be named.
The French are credited with coining the phrase l’appel du vide, naming the intrusive thought of the urge to step off of high ledges. It’s an instinct supposedly born from crossed wires between the primal brain and the conscious mind—not one of self-harm necessarily, but one that reflects the conflict and chaos of human nature. Canyon edges, deep-sea trenches, black holes: They all captivate the imagination with the magnetism of being subject to nothing but gravity.
For -io, her sixth album as Circuit des Yeux, Chicago experimental fixture Haley Fohr faced a creative void. Reeling from the death of a close friend, she accepted a subtropical artists’ residency that backfired in the short term as she spent the first weeks of 2020 on “the saddest beach in [her] life.” The subsequent year-plus of mass death and forced isolation only compounded the woe. She manifested her anguish as 23-piece orchestral arrangements that captured the enormity of her sense of loss, building the small universes that make up her most expansive work yet.
From an opening wisp of breath, Fohr quickly shifts into the dense, thriving energy at -io’s core. Thick layers of organ and grandiose strings feel both devotional and introspective, drawn toward dramatic internal churning. “Vanishing” courses on strings with an innate swagger, like a shark cutting through the open ocean. Inspired by one of Fohr’s PTSD memories, “The Chase” channels the helpless dread and tension of a nightmare, its rhythm bolting under prickling guitars and Fohr’s harrowing whispers.
-io closes the gap between the elegant environs of 2017’s Reaching for Indigo and the oblique, seedy glamour of last year’s Jacqueline, released under Fohr’s neo-outlaw alias Jackie Lynn. Jacqueline’s “Dream St.” and “Casino Queen” danced in the darkness, and on -io, Fohr plunges even deeper. Her distinct baritone remains one of her most powerful assets; amid the roar of strings, drums, and horns, her fantastic vocal sweeps create vast space.
Fohr cuts through the din, singing, almost bellowing, buoyed by a boundless ferocity rarely afforded to women in any other context. Her maxims demand attention with the same gravitational intensity as the cosmic imagery she invokes: “Descend bold traveler and attain the center of the earth,” she intones at the end of the cycloning “Neutron Star.” Though the song begins as a loping country ballad, Fohr races upward into a braid of fuzzed-out guitar and strings made fiery by flares of brass.
At the Rauschenberg Residency in Captiva, Florida, Fohr was enthralled by the vivid coastal sunsets, a daily shock of color that she described as “a reminder to step outside myself.” To that end, she takes care in her arrangements to recreate the feeling of separating awareness from ego. She distinguishes the concept of a space for entrenched grief from one of all-encompassing darkness, further emphasized in the cover’s bright scarlet border and Fohr’s orange vestments. Her sensory world-building extends beyond the songs, and in an accompanying listening guide she advises set and setting: a lit candle, bubbly water with bitters, a long walk, scents of sandalwood and amber. Surrounding the high stakes of her compositions, she prioritizes degrees of warmth and comfort as part of her immersive design.
The capacious environments offer the relief of suspension, held by sorrow, joy, and calm all at once. There’s room for the sprawl of emotions that are too vast, too complicated, and channeled too deeply to name. “I’m changing while I try to hold the reins,” she confesses on “Walking Toward Winter” against liquid edges of reverberating organ, as if trying to get a grip on a moving stream. As Fohr howls on “Stranger,” the song feels close to an exorcism.
Fohr backs away from heavier orchestration with the breathtaking closer “Oracle Song,” where she gestures at teenage trauma and warns of imminent danger. As Fohr sings about treacherous men and uncaring state institutions, “Oracle Song” fans out over a lilting cradle of acoustic guitar and humming strings; though the resilient spirit can be restored, she sings, “I’d give you every inch I had/To keep that first soul from going bad.” It’s a gentle and poignant lullaby for those tangled in an expanding web of harm.
-io’s sonic mass is enveloping, making for an album that’s both difficult to approach piecemeal and hard to swallow in one sitting. (In her listening guide, Fohr advises taking a break after “Sculpting the Exodus” or “Walking Toward Winter.”) But in claiming such a wide swath of space for herself, Fohr makes room for listeners to release themselves, too. By diving headlong into the yawning internal chasm, it’s possible to find a new autonomy in the freefall.
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