Review: Valerie June’s The Moon and Stars Is a Master Class in Controlled Chaos

Valerie June often comes across as a committed hippie, with her Zen temperament, bohemian aesthetic, and songs about “dancing on the astral plane.” The Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter also has a sharp, keening voice, lending an authentic, almost anthropological quality to her Appalachian-inspired waltzes and bluesy murder ballads. As one of scant few black women making Americana music, June has doubtlessly always had to rise above the same old strum and twang to earn her keep. But she’s never journeyed as far out—or inward—as she does on her fifth album, The Moon and Stars: Prescription for Dreamers.

The album, June’s first in four years, was co-produced by Jack Splash, known primarily for his work with R&B artists like Alicia Keys and Cee-Lo Green. So when the first minute or so of the opening track, “Stay,” introduces a few retro-soul trappings—like grainy New Orleans-y piano and deep, sighing brass—it’s tempting to assume that this might be how the next 45 minutes will unfold, which would be a bold enough departure for June in its own right. But any such assumptions are dashed by the time that the strings, woodwinds, and military-march drums come in and June starts chanting, “Oh, I, oh, I, oh, I,” in hypnotic, mantra-like fashion. It’s enough to make her refrain of “Oh, I don’t know how long I’ll stay”—ostensibly about a crumbling relationship—sound downright existential.

The rest of The Moon and Stars is a similarly ambitious, dizzying jumble of genres and tones, and June manages to hold everything together on the power of her beguiling voice and charisma. In fact, her performance is the only reason a song like “You and I,” with its vacillations between tender country-gospel and dramatic crescendos with stuttering electronic drums, works at all. She exudes restrained sweetness one second, and hits a big, cathartic money note the next. The fact that the following track, “Colors,” is a drone-y, string-laden folk song only adds to the thrilling disorientation—and the impressiveness of June’s range.

This is the norm throughout the album, as the biggest-sounding, most out-there songs of June’s career are sequenced alongside some of her most meditative and intimate, such as the way the showstopping “Call Me a Fool” leads directly into the hushed “Fallin’.” The effect can be discombobulating in the moment but is ultimately a point of strength. When June drifts into melodrama on the piano ballad “Why the Bright Stars Glow,” which is uncharacteristically treacly for the singer and is easy to imagine as the soundtrack to a high school graduation slideshow (“When the race is run/And the goal is won/Look how far we’ve come/Dancing in the sun”), she immediately pivots, closing The Moon and Stars with two of her most Zen-like compositions, “Home Inside” and the ambient, 90-second “Starlight Ethereal Silence.”

The album’s two best songs epitomize June’s emotional and musical multitudes. “Two Roads” begins as a soul pastiche but quickly morphs into a gorgeous country song, drenched in honey-sweet pedal steel. The song is about grappling with the consequences of past decisions, with June—like her soft, upper-register vocal hook— sounding lost in the clouds. “Call Me a Fool,” by contrast, is immediate, focused, and raw, featuring a powerhouse performance whose classic soul lineage is underscored by the presence of legendary Memphis singer Carla Thomas on backing vocals. “Thought I had it under control/But it shook me, gripped me, grabbed my soul,” June sings. It’s a line that, once the chorus hits and June unleashes a gritty, back-of-the-throat growl, rings absolutely true. New sensations seem to be exploding out of June almost as fast as she can process them, and The Moon and Stars is the controlled chaos that results.