Allegra Krieger’s "Art of the Unseen Infinity Machine", her second full-length album with Double Double Whammy, is a collection of 12 songs that pick at the fragile membrane between life and death. Krieger’s previous album, "I Keep My Feet on the Fragile Plane", hewed more closely to the domestic spaces of city and mind. Rolling Stone regarded the album as “ten songs of heady philosophical meanderings packed with emotional dynamite,” and likened her “finely phrased lyrics” to those of “Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, [and] David Berman.” Krieger’s existential meditations remain on "Art of the Unseen Infinity Machine", however her meandering melodies have taken on a stronger sense of direction. She narrates candidly and assertively; the full-band arrangements never overpower, only offer a robust platform on which Krieger’s voice reaches new heights. The full band brings a heightened sense of drama to the album’s arrangements, which contrasts the quieter approach of Krieger’s previous LP. There are noisy interludes, jazz-inflected discursions, impactful stops and starts, and occasional spaces for Krieger to stretch out her impressive vocal range (most prominently at the dazzling climax of album stand out “Came”). In "Art of the Unseen Infinity Machine", Krieger invites us to a place where transfiguration is not only possible but actively happening. From this place, the beautiful and the banal and the terrible are all laid out before us. And Krieger asks us not to look away. Instead, she invites us to stare down the beautiful and terrible in the world, and to realize that sometimes the only way out is through.
