Aleixa

Item: Honey Lake
Author: Bev White

Honey Lake

(1996)

Reviewed by Bev White

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Label Liquid Disc RecordsThe LighthouseOctober 1996

dance rock gothic rock industrial industrial rock

My ladies they all fear But I am bold I don't ask why I'm going higher without you (from "Five")

Aleixa (pronounced ah-lee-kah) has produced an album that delves into emotional aspects of earthly reality, and explores the honesty of both faith's periodic dryness and despair and its ensuant firm, powerful growth-things beyond the reach of the trite.

Unclaimed by industrial, yet too intensely reliant upon fierce electric guitar and samples of anger to join entirely with its synth-kin, the songs range from the playfully macabre (enthusiastic playground-denizen youth chant "m-u-r! d-e-r! k-i-l-l!" on "I Could Murder") to the aethyric, ethereally despairing (the spinning and tumble on the woefully short "Rain In The Air") on through to the defiance of evil's unwarranted shackle ("Five"). Laced with graceful, emotionally-wrought female vocal harmonics throughout, the opus flees overt harshness without falling into the trap of gratuitous incongruity between style and substance.

It is refreshing to see, confronted at last, the arid times of life and the sound of their cries-be they quiet despair or full-on self-contradictory rage. Though occasionally criticized for the darkness of their depicted world, Aleixa is to be commended for taking the path of the drier psalm in a world which prefers either pre-packaged, fruitless angst or grape, grape joy-neither of which is always honest or true to reality. Individual songs, taken out of context, may seem to lack the hope we are told we should have, but not only is faith made clear as a subtext and overt statement across the CD, hope is not always in large supply.

We struggle with our fallenness, and Honeylake well depicts that struggle.