Dawn Richard: Goldenheart – review

The stakes are high on Dawn Richard's debut solo album proper, the first in a planned trilogy following last year's prelude EP, Armor On. Richard depicts herself as a Joan of Arc-style figure waging a holy war in the name of love, and Goldenheart is peppered with battle motifs and religious metaphors. "I faced the Beast with my bare hands," she declares on Goliath; elsewhere, walls crumble, seas are parted and entire nation states are formed. Remarkably, Richard's array of sonic weapons matches her epic, elemental vision. Goldenheart is dazzling and imperious, from the stately marches that bookend the album (Return of a Queen, 300) to its exultatory house climaxes (Riot, In Your Eyes); from its casual interpolations of Debussy and Peter Gabriel to the astonishing Northern Lights, on which an invocatory beat is built out of layered, stereopanning handclaps. All the while, across the heart-racing urgency of Goldenheart's first half and the tender, untethered drift of its second, Richard sings as though fighting for her soul.