A subtle and sweet album of soaring vocals and semi-trip hop and gothic flavor, this continues to be my favorite of early 2001. The mid-paced tempo is at times though very pompous, keeping the organic triphop and rock styles from showing itself too much. The focus of 90% of the music however is the clean, breathless voice of Victoria Lloyd's melody lines who, for old timers might recognize a bit of Karen Carpenter. Victoria carries this album almost too much though, prancing, pondering and yearning nonstop; yet songs such as Time and The Maiden, Lolite, and Blinking Tears are so mesmerizingly beautiful I just want to play them over and over again. Focusing, the music does actually come out, complementing everything in lush rhythm. In a way, this is not too ethereal, delicate, and sad, but rather strong and decorative mostly. There are the ethereal songs, the trippy songs, and the gothic songs throughout, but mostly I see this as beautiful music. I liken this as something in between the cold electronic passion of Portishead to the warm-blooded rock exploration of Dutch group The Gathering. For those familiar, Victoria is almost quite the clone of The Gathering's Anneke Van Giersbergen. Love the Giver, Bittersweat are wonderful, sub-woofer booming, trippy remakes - something the new album Time Again should review (average album of Industrial DJ remixes). The last song seems to point to a new direction for the band.

by Alzn, score 5 out of 5