C.A.R. Crossing Prior Street

At 16 years old, Chloé Raunet fled her native Vancouver for London, trying to escape her difficult childhood. With her third album under the moniker C.A.R., Raunet uses 42 minutes of sophisticated, electronic pop to tell her story and make amends with her past and – perhaps – her present.

Crossing Prior Street, whose title is an homage to the London street that was the first place the Franco-Canadian producer has ever called home, is a ten-track journey through a healing process; an experiment in leftfield pop that explores the scarcity and loneliness of life in a metropolis. Linked by a drum machine that sets her narrative’s heartbeat (the main recurring element here), Raunet’s vocals tell her story among metallic filtered voices and pop singing, helped by new wave/post-punk inspired synths. The dark, gothic atmosphere of tracks like ‘Pressure Drop’ is counterbalanced by tribal pieces like ‘Steals the Dance’. It’s the sound of the street, with sirens, drills, steps, and disturbed transmissions, that permeates these tracks. This is a record on which the rhythm of a big city enters the personal story of a teenager looking for herself, and becomes a part of her.