Album Review: Reaching for Indigo by Circuit des Yeux

I ‘m unqualified to write about Reaching for Indigo, Haley Fohr’s new album as Circuit des Yeux. Even the trivial task of splitting up the lines above, from the brilliant opener, felt difficult. Because, on the album, Fohr’s phrases unfold fluidly over dense instrumental arrangements, so as to make my own medium, with its arbitrary divisions, seem paltry and dim.

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Every day, I write a lot of words about music. Oftentimes, however, I'm struck with this intense discomfort - and yes, guilt too - at taking records apart and breaking them down. In hindsight, I sometimes feel dirty and voyeuristic about it. Yet still, I can't help doing it time and time again ….

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The events that inspired Reaching for Indigo--Haley Fohr's stunning fifth album as Circuit Des Yeux--sound at once like an exorcism and an epiphany. As the Lafayette, Ind.-born, Chicago-based songwriter tells it, she mysteriously collapsed one night in early 2016 and found herself "convulsing and vomiting and crying" on the floor. Afterwards, she moved out of her home and eventually adopted a more open understanding of the world around her.

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Reaching for Indigo isn’t an album that makes you feel all warm and toasty inside as it plays out. If the primary goal of Circuit Des Yeux - aka Haley Fohr - was to take us outside our comfort zone, the mission has been accomplished. With an approach that connects the jarring and beautiful, Fohr’s vision comes to life.

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Photo by Michael Vallera Circuit Des Yeux is not Haley Fohr. Sure, there's a multi-instrumentalist with an extraordinary, contralto voice named Haley Fohr who has been making music under the Circuit Des Yeux name for a decade, but that's never been the full sum of her identity. The CDY sound is pretty mercurial, encompassing bedroom folk, basement noise and ambitious art songs played by a shifting line-up that might consist of just Fohr or a full band.

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