The Slideshow Effect, is indeed, somewhat, the aural equivalent of discovering a box of old photographic slides; digging out an old slide projector, dimming the lights and starting the carousel.
As the songs unfold their beautiful faded colours of decades gone past you realize that the slide do not belong to you or your family – instead the images conjoured are of someone else’s loved ones; someone else’s memories.
There is, though, a voyeuristic pleasure in listening to these songs from the Ontario duo Denise Nouvion and Evan Abeele; there are moments of wonderful hazy double-exposure dream pop throughout the record.
All Our Wonder opens a lullaby-like music box as Nouvian croons over a lusciously paced bass driven slice of dreamy pop; there’s a little more immediacy on this long player than earlier releases which I have to confess to enjoying – a stand out case in point the 80s-uk-indie infused The Kids Were Wrong which somehow reminds me of Altered Images – a pace that is only every gently returned to in moments of Old Haunts, Pale Blue and the absolutely gorgeous centre-point of Heirloom (an album stand-out, in my opinion).
I guess, though, while voyeuristically peeking at another’s slideshow can offer its own particular fascinations, the downside will be, like parts of this record, a sense of disconnection between the listening-viewer / watching-listener and the image-sounds presented. Thus leaving some empathic gaps between audience and performance which can at the worst instances leave the record unable to truly affect beyond a sense of curious wonder.
