Raveena


(Copyright © 2021 Piero Scaruffi | Terms of Use )
Lucid (2019), 5/10
Asha’s Awakening (2022), 4/10
Links:

New York's bisexual singer-songwriter Raveena Aurora, the daughter of Indian immigrants, debuted with the four-song EP Shanti (2017) and the album Lucid (2019), produced by Everett Orr, a dreamy sensual tropical soul-pop (Stone, Floating). After the EP Moonstone (2020), she complicated her music on second album Asha’s Awakening (2022), produced and composed by an army of producers (Aaron Liao, Andrew Sarlo, Everett Orr, Jeff Kleinman, etc), an album that tries to be many things in one: a (pale) experiment in fusion of Western and Indian music, a neo-soul album, a dance album, a follow-up of her first album, and an autobiographical concept album. The Caribbean-tinged hip-hop Secret (with Vince Staples) is trivial. The aggressive funk jam Kathy Left 4 Kathmandu sounds contrived. The more conventional neo-soul ballads, namely Love Overgrown, produced by Kleinman, and the Indian-tinged Time Flies, produced by Rostam Batmanglij, are better than the average but hardly memorable. The fragile and sensual Endless Summer and especially Asha's Kiss are the only songs that match the languid, ethereal, sensual spirit of the debut(and the latter also comes with a raga coda). The album ends with the 13-minute "guided meditation" of Let Your Breath Become a Flower, not exactly a stroke of genius.
(Copyright © 2021 Piero Scaruffi | Terms of use )