It was not so long ago (actually, it was sometime ago) that Rachel LeBlanc was harassing eardrums with a guitar. This time, LeBlanc stirs up something much deeper, more personal, and far too intimate.
As Blessed Blood, LeBlanc is armed largely with her voice (and a few friends). The result is a form of scripture, speaking to a spiritual plane that I have yet to see and may never experience. “Liquefiction” is baroque and ornate as it swells, recalling a forgotten chant to the heavens as LeBlanc’s voice multiplies and harmonizes against itself before a undercurrent of swelling synth and wailing voice overtakes the moment. It’s ghostly, reaching from another world to both scare and sooth. Where LeBlanc once showed us the ugliness of guttural guitar, she demonstrates a restrained beauty of a voice that may only be matched by that of Haley Fohr.
“To Feel At Ease” has a stripped down new age approach as it begins, LeBlanc stretching her soaring vocals around a similar pop phrasing before the melody grows frantic (thanks to somesurprises’ Natasha El-Sergany), before her voice becomes tantric, morphing into an incantation that is fit for a church or the grindhouse.
This nakedness of music—built around LeBlanc’s eerie vocal phrasings—goes beyond the pale. Perhaps inspired by a career change where her work puts in her the face of death, regret, and reconciliation, these three compositions offer a deeply moving example of what a voice can move within all of us. Whatever the inspiration, however long the incubation, we need more of this. LeBlanc has been holding onto a talent as both a healer and a musician. Blessed Blood is truly an angelic work, which is why it is so frightening.