Vivien Linden Issue #29

Watch The Light Fade (Tarnished)

By Dean Ramos
Published: September 1st, 2006 | 12:00am

Despite what the black and white album cover of the pale, raven-haired artist standing before a still sea might suggest, Vivien Linden isn’t this year’s big goth queen. While, yes, there is a distraught melancholy here that is synonymous with the genre, Watch The Light Fade is pure country-fueled Americana.

Throughout this debut full-length permeates a beautiful sort of sorrow-filled hopefulness that one can’t help but be drawn to. Not only that, the entire album has a feel of one of those really calm thunderstorms that used to keep you up at night as a kid, those storms that eventually cleared up to reveal a ruby red sky.

Just a few of the notable tracks here include the atmospheric yet twangy opening number “Pass the Wires”; the sassy, classic country-like, and lonesome tune “I Fall To You”; and the hauntingly sexy “Bewitched.” Not to be overlooked, however, are the sweet and tender “Breathless” and the Grapes Of Wrath feel of “Oh My Lover.” By album’s end, Linden waxes nostalgic with “Going Back to Houston,” and never straying too far from the formula, the closer sounds every bit as fresh as opener “Pass The Wires” did.

While admittedly not a perfect record (a few of the tracks do drag on a bit, especially for an album only nine songs long), Watch the Light Fade is an admirable debut from an artist who can come on like a rainstorm and touch your heart at the same time. Let’s see a goth princess do that.