Niemi, Eliza

Kneading dough is tricky—you should know how it’s supposed to feel. If you try too hard you could make it worse. It’s a beautiful practice—creation with a gentle touch, to work at something so it can be left alone. “If it’s too drawn out it’s awful. It’s easy to give too much.” Dance in the mirror. Contemplate your veiny hands. Who do they remind you of?

On Progress Bakery, her second album as a solo artist, Toronto artist Eliza Niemi knows to leave some questions alone—to let juxtaposition and tension be the proof. It doesn’t have to be hard. The feelings and revelations they provoke rise in the heat. The smell is sweet. Crispy on the outside and soft all the way through. She playfully slip-slides through words and sounds and images, delighting in surprise, skimming ideas like stones cast across clear water, touching down briefly with uncommon grace.

Music and words don’t always have to interact. Where she decides to keep them apart gives a new contour to where and how she puts them together. The kind of thing you’re supposed to take for granted with songs and their singers comes alive in Eliza’s hands—the little miracle of mixing, kneading, stretching, and stopping.