Victory Review, July 2001

Seattle singer-songwriter Willow's second release is eerie and ethereal, featuring her half whispered vocals and oblique lyrics, and rich, electro-acoustic arrangements. A mood of tension and expectancy prevails, driven by Willow's intimate, restrained vocal delivery and circular song forms. Her singing is more textural than melodic, offering little musical contrast and development, yet creating an almost palpable atmosphere of emotional darkness. The songs often have the associative nature of dreams, with evocative, poetic images that provided glimpses into a personal landscape of loneliness, loss, and despair. In a sense, many of these songs are like movements in one larger piece, tapping into the same well of painful emotion and exploring much the same expressive range, but the variety and spaciousness of the arrangements and production keep the album from becoming too claustrophobic. Willow is able to give voice to those vague, disturbing fears and longings that lurk at the edges of our awareness, that will not step forward entirely into the light and yet will not go away. Highlights are 'Seem to Have Nothing', 'Four Corners', the deceptively bittersweet 'Keep Me This Way', the slowly building intensity of 'Absinthe', and the title track, 'Sweet Dark Demon' .

 Written by Richard Middleton for the Victory Review.

© 2001 All rights reserved.