Album Review: Find the Sun by Deradoorian

There's a moment three quarters of the way through the song 'Monk's Robes' where the music transforms and Angel Deradoorian switches perspectives, casting off the guise of a confused monk on a pilgrimage to speak to God and talking in the voice of the Almighty himself. "Child of earth both mortal and blind, what do you seeketh here?" she intones over crashing organs and choirlike harmonies, "Bound to the illusion of the physical plane, what is it you truly wish to gain?" It is a truly, literally awesome moment, the sound of an artist reaching out for something beyond what we know to brush the face of the divine. It's just one of many such transcendent moments on 'Find The Sun', an album wholly concerned with belief and the human pursuit of paradise through soul-searching, internal revelation and spiritual awakening.

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Angel Deradoorian spent much of her career as a supporting player with Dirty Projectors, but her solo work has revealed an artist with a thrillingly singular voice. Find the Sun is her latest full-length record as Deradoorian, and it marks an imposing shift in her sound — no longer floating and bright, the music on Find the Sun takes its title as a panicked demand, a journey through the long, lightless tunnels of the mind. The record is subterranean and dank — pressurized to the point of suffocation, it takes the percussive drive of her debut (2015's The Exploding Flower Planet) and combines it with the hypnosis of 2017's hushed Eternal Recurrence, crafting a restless and twilit world.

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Finding oneself is never easy, but Angel Deradoorian seems determined to try. In recent years, the nomadic singer-songwriter cultivated self-awareness while actively embracing solitude, decamping to the woods of upstate New York for long stretches. In 2019, however, she found herself craving communion (and the company of other musicians), and brought that feeling into the studio.

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Angel Deradoorian developed the songs that make up Find the Sun in New York, then brought them to life in a beach-side house in Marin County, California, along with help from percussionist Samer Ghadry and multi-instrumentalist Dave Harrington. While this is the most collaborative record Deradoorian has produced under her own name, it's also more reflective of her own spiritual quest than anything else she's released. The songs are about gazing inward in order to find one's true self and recognize one's power, yet also acknowledging the importance of living in the moment and working with the situation at hand.

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