Arily Michele finds new life in the ruins on 'meditation for wildflowers'

'meditation for wildflowers' feels gloriously ambitious from the outset. Across an hour of neo-psychedelic pop, dream-pop and gothic storytelling, Arily Michele builds a world where devastation and renewal exist side by side. The album's central image of wildflowers returning after a forest fire is simple, but in her hands it becomes a symbol of resilience, survival and the possibility of becoming beautiful again after destruction.

She draws deeply from Rocky Mountain scenery, surrounding the songs with images of snow, wilderness, flowers and open space, with its natural imagery existing in direct tension with surveillance, data monetisation, corporate power, overwork and environmental destruction, giving the album the feeling of searching for something human inside an increasingly artificial world.

Her classically trained vocal rises through lofty production and psychedelic textures with an almost cinematic intensity, allowing moments of vulnerability to feel truly enormous. There's also a striking contrast between the delicacy of her vocal presence and the darker ideas moving underneath the record, and that aura gives the album much of its atmosphere.

Just as flowers return after fire, the music continually moves between fragility and resilience. There's a softness here, as she continues to build on its psychedelic scale, theatricality and moments of genuine grandeur.

In all, 'meditation for wildflowers' is lush, expansive and wonderfully imaginative. It's an album where soprano vocals soar through psychedelic haze, dream-pop becomes cinematic, and new life pushes defiantly through the ashes.