- Wherein a latter-day Celine Dion track is smudged into an aching ambient ballad.
- If an ambient album inspired by Oneohtrix Point Never's vaporwave-inventing Eccojams and using exclusively Celine Dion songs as its source material sounds like a gimmick to you, then maybe you should lighten up.
The results on Once Upon A Time, released by Romance back in January and finally getting a physical release this month, are somehow both exactly the sum of their parts and something greater still. The title track and opener pulls apart the treacly 2002 ballad "Have You Ever Been In Love," a song so monstrously commercial it was released on two studio albums in a row. It becomes the foundation for an airy ambient track where the syrupy piano line is wrought with impossibly heavy meaning.
Overdone orchestration turns to an iridescent sheen in the background, as Dion's voice repeats two lyrics over and over, lending an almost sinister edge to the question, "Have you ever walked on air?" With the emotional weight of a Bvdub track but the rarefied atmosphere of the earliest vaporwave, "Once Upon A Time" is a success that crowns one of the year's most unexpectedly lovely albums.