Eden Ariel’s debut EP Altars is a New York City dreamscape

Hailing from New York state by way of Manhattan, Eden Ariel lets her environment take up a character of its own in her lyricism on her new EP Altars (2020). Opening track “City Rain” is a love story about New York City as much as it is about a person. After its jazzy piano intro, Eden’s lilting voice carries the first verse, singing “I left all my bags on the subway yesterday.” She paints us a heart-wrenching story about unrequited love, set against the smoke and rain of Manhattan’s gritty beauty. Her songs are at once ethereal, reflective, and raw. Her blend of poetic lyricism, dream-folk and pop allows both accessibility and an almost sage-like perspective on the world around her. 

With “If the Butterfly Dreamed Me,” Ariel blends surrealist dream logic and aching nostalgia with haunting harmonies and instrumentation that transport the listener to another dimension. The song is evocative of both Lana Del Rey’s Ultraviolence as well as Nicole Dollanganger’s 2015 album Natural Born Losers. However, Ariel maintains her own voice and sound, asserting herself as a multi-talented artist to keep an eye on.  

She returns to her acoustic roots with the titular track “Altars.” The main star in this song is her crystal-clear, rich voice, as well as her meditative lyrics. “Altars” marks a shift in the album from the internal psyche to a larger consciousness for the world outside. While at first the song appears to be about vulnerability in her relationship, it echoes greater concerns for the “bodies broken by the American dream.” 

“Goodbye Coney Island” takes this global consciousness even further, as a longing love letter to Coney Island and a pre-climate crisis world. The melodic ballad transforms into a climactic, psychedelic experience, with synths and a guitar solo fading off into eternity.
Finally, Ariel concludes with the optimistic single “Far Rockaway,” a dream pop song about escaping the binary constraints of today’s world. She sings of a cult-like utopia “beyond reason, beyond rhyme, beyond symbol and sign,” echoed by the accompanying music video, released last fall. This is an apt conclusion for the EP, as with her reflective lyrics and ethereal sound comes an overarching sense of hope. Altars allows Eden Ariel to articulate not only her own voice, both sonically and lyrically, but the voice of a generation that won’t give up on humanity.

Article by Juliet Larsen