If you don’t commit your whole body to your practice, devote every moment of dreaming, longing, and care to your own creative ideal, whatever it may be, then who will? So asks Jane Paknia on Millions Of Years Of Longing, the New York City-based musician and composer’s second album. With self-honouring declarations like, “Time is the thing I just can’t give to you / I’ve given you everything else,” placed over a dizzying sea of multi-genre sounds (with a drum and bass breakbeat to curtain the final track, no less), Paknia’s second release announces her as a pop innovator to be reckoned with.
Following the punchy, synthesizer-laden opener ‘Waiting pt 1’, ‘Solace’ offers a spare, frenetic dance hook driven by a revving pulse, folding each sound into a singularly rattled depth before coming back up for air in a fully-realised cry: “I crack my heart open when no one’s near / just to get some solace around here.” The song’s title was formed by combining SOPHIE and Alice Coltrane’s names, both major influences for Paknia, who has described the song as being about the difficulty of living up to one’s own artistic ideal. The title’s namesakes are not taken in vain; SOPHIE’s rubbery early singles loom large over the track, with glimmering 90s house keys thrown in for good measure.
The instrumental title track registers, initially, as a sort of lost B-side to Caroline Polachek’s ‘So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings’ (the American singer’s twirling vocal precision is referenced throughout the record), before introducing twinkling percussion and locking into a gentle, yacht-like groove. The sonic layers swell, crescendoing into a full-throated piano melody and stadium-ready drums – an anthemic close for a song that dares to ask, What if Aja-era Steely Dan were signed to PC Music?
The back half of the album begins a stunning run with ‘Resolve’, a glittering, wintery ballad that falls somewhere between a whispering, lover-close composition by French ambient artist Colleen and the softest, most sonic-equivalent-of-a-snow-globe moments on Björk’s Vespertine (see: ‘Cocoon’ and ‘Frosti’). Melodically and lyrically hymn-like, (“My arms are vibrating / because they want to touch you”), ‘Resolve’ carves a sanctuary into the album, one that sublimates longing into a kind of divine ecstasy before heaving every ounce of energy into album standout, ‘Circular’. A velvety, thumping bassline indebted to the likes of Detroit house legend Theo Parrish sends the rhythm straight to the jugular, laying a foundation for brooding synths soon to soar over the track’s horizon. The song unfolds into a rollicking, sweaty dance, something akin to ABBA at their slinkiest – think ‘Lay All Your Love On Me’ dissected and dispersed over a four-on-the-floor all-nighter. The track sighs and collapses into a jazz breakdown, with Paknia’s vocal tendrils swirling above. An elegant finale well-positioned to bat against the best of Julia Holter’s orchestral crests.
Millions Of Years Of Longing is an inventive and exploratory sophomore effort, covering vast sonic ground across electronic, pop, and jazz-fusion. Paknia crafts an evergreen pop melody with as much finesse as she crafts a complex jazz composition, situating her work among jazz-informed, hybrid genre contemporaries like Floating Points and Nala Sinephro. With an array of influences on her sleeve, including her Iranian grandmother, a classically-trained pianist, Paknia’s work is fresh and dazzling – an optimistic forecast for where pop has yet to turn.
