Jorja Chalmers - Midnight Train (Italians Do It Better)

Jorja Chalmers’s second album Midnight Train is a confidently noirish affair that is as much dream pop as dreamscape

An afternoon spent listening to Blue Note records along with the intention to review singer, saxophonist and synth manipulator Jorja Chalmers’s second LP Midnight Train in the evening somehow led to flicking through Raymond Chandler novels. Whatever the unspoken reasoning, I was able to access a noirish state of mind, which felt entirely appropriate to the task ahead. Produced by Chalmers and mixed by frequent David Lynch sound collaborator Dean Hurley, Midnight Train conjures an even more consistent neo-noir sound world than its predecessor, Human Again. Chalmers’s saxophone here evokes hardboiled movements through harsh lamp-lit streets in a language that isn’t restricted by genre signifiers. She’s certainly carving out a unique space for herself, even within the aesthetically assured ranks of Italians Do It Better.

Opener “Bring Me Down” comes on like a restrained Julee Cruise, the sonic equivalent of drapes fluttering in the wind; what lies beyond sensed and perhaps even momentarily glimpsed. The sultry saxophone-led noir-wave of “I’ll Be Waiting” then takes hold fast, commanding the tone of the room, with an irresistible narrative pull into velvet night time. Imagine a rickety camera projecting moving images of Jorja Chalmers as Philip Marlowe, parked on the corner in the rain, forever waiting. Inky synth interlude “Boadicea” turns up the pressure and pushes down like a rain-bloated cloud, before “Love Me Tonight” bursts forth like so many stars as Chalmers serenades worlds between worlds.

There’s a curious choice of cover in The Doors’ “Riders on the Storm”. A stripped back insistent synth pulses as if from a distant world and Chalmers brings a somnambulant sensuality to the piece; more Lynch than Oliver Stone and for that I’m thankful. “The Poet” is an exercise in Kubrickian unease with shades of Wendy Carlos, whereas “The Wolves of the Orangery” and its identity crisis dream pop has a sugar-coated heart of darkness. “Midnight Train” takes matters full circle, with Chalmers repeating the phrase “I’ll be waiting… for you” into the enveloping night across a track that brings to mind Lynch’s fondness for This Mortal Coil.

Jorja Chalmers Bandcamp