Ananda Xenia Shakti and Love Power the Band Release New Music

Anyone who thinks conceptual pop music has to be overindulgent to make a real statement to the audience likely doesn’t know any better, because those who listen to the new record Love Is Where You Are from Ananda Xenia Shakti and Love Power the Band this spring is going to know that the opposite is quite true. Blending melodic whims with a fervent sense of equality between lyrics and music, Love Is Where You Are features a rather complicated foundation, but what it lacks in simplicity on the compositional end it more than compensates us for in straight-up pop appeal. 

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The progressive influence over tracks like the title cut, “Devi,” and “I Am Love” is difficult for me to ignore, but the fact that it isn’t drawing a lot of unwanted camp into the aesthetical soul of this record is something to applaud. Shakti is using a lot of thoughtful combinations of poetic license and harmony-based expressiveness in this EP, but she doesn’t seem to avoid making the beat a feature when it counts (“Radha Grace”), which is not something I have been able to say for the majority of her peers fronting their own bands right now. 

Psychedelic-tinged in spots but more focused and pop-structured than anything you’re going to get out of the American underground’s harder-edged indie players at the moment, what Ananda Xenia Shakti and Love Power the Band’s Love Is Where You Are offers the listener is a chance to experience new age duality in a relatively cut and dry setting, which isn’t exactly a coupling that you can come across very often in this medium, or any other for that matter. It’s conflictive and stirring, but more than anything else this is a tracklist that demands a reaction out of those who are bold enough to give it a listen. 

Nicole Killian