On her second full-length as Plume Girl, Sowmya Somanath creates a transportive and meditative soundscape. Unnameable Glory is dream-like, combining Hindustani vocalizations, synths, guitar, and field recordings to create an ethereal sound that rewards both the passive and active listener. Plume Girl builds on the sound of her first album, In the End We Begin (which will be re-issued on the same day as Unnameable Glory's release), creating songs that feel more ambitious in their scope as the listener is whisked through a variety of nature-based settings and human moments.
Somanath's background in classical Indian singing and composition is centered in Unnameable Glory, present in both the album's melodic structure and vocals. Additional training in Western classical, pop, and folk music, plus the use of a diverse set of field recordings, compliments Somanath's Hindustani influences, creating a versatile sound that surprises and soothes in equal measure. The ability to seamlessly blend field recordings with instrumentals is one of the strongest attributes of Unnameable Glory, making you feel grounded in the moment of each song. Overflowing with life, "Art" opens with a repetitive glitching played under water sounds. The listener might imagine water sloshing against the side of a tub or the beating of a wave against a boat. High-pitched, uptempo beats cascade over the recorded water, suggesting a moment of urgency, only for the passage to smooth out into a mellow, acoustic guitar. I couldn't help but think of each piece as it might relate to the water, synth droplets plunking across the surface, guitar chords rippling out from the center.
In "DNA", a recording stitches together several voices who each speak about music. The lyrics "Dance music/the way that it feels/oh I know that song/watch this/..." lead into the distorted singing voice of a child who improvises a song. The improvisation ends in the delighted laughter of the child and another person, which is then looped and mimicked by a piano and used as the back track for the remainder of the song. "Chain" is another one of the album's standouts, driven by a mesmerizing vocal performance. Plume Girl flows from a driving, repeated chant to vocalizations that are backed by a layer of vocal distortion which at times adopts a raspy, guttural quality, adding depth to each phrase. The song ends on a question, spoken without effect in perhaps the song's most stripped back moment. For it's clear delivery, the lyrics pose a question left unanswered. "What do I believe in?/the answer is..."
I found myself returning to this moment while reading the album notes, which describe the heart of Unnamed Glory as "a sense of curiosity and surrender—a willingness to listen without judgment, to let the moment be unnameable, to allow wonder to arise and dissolve." The album's warm, contemplative tone is in awe of each moment it chronicles. As the music transports the listener to a street corner on a busy road or a forest of trees, you might consider how these scenes would make you feel, and how you would describe that feeling. Plume Girl grapples with the honest documentation of these experiences, all while knowing that some things are beyond our ability to express.