By Chris Richards Chris Richards Pop music critic Email Bio Follow Pop music critic March 5 at 1:36 PM Here’s a cool little miracle that happens all the time and we barely even think about it: A song isn’t truly finished until the listener completes it in their mind. I’m not talking about the noise of trees falling in an empty forest.
The whole thing starts with a positive visualization: “I saw things I imagined.” Solange sings a version of that lyric 16 different ways, and by the time she finishes her final lap around the track, we’re hopefully seeing some things, too. The committed vocal repetition throughout “When I Get Home” feels both casual and intense, and it makes time move in strange ways.
On “Dreams,” there’s a delicate push and pull between dazed distance and wakefulness, hope and disappointment. Solange’s mantra line — “Dreams, they come a long way, not today” — is the prettiest thing she sings on this album, but before we can float off into perfumed oblivion, another voice appears in the background, chanting from across a hypnagogic chasm: “Sometimes, I feel I’m going down/ Sometimes, I feel I’m gonna die.
You're just making things up these days.