Circuit Des Yeux

At just 22 years old, Indiana’s Haley Fohr has already undergone the sort of transformation that scarcely strikes musicians two or three times her age. The release this year of Portrait, her third solo album as Circuit des Yeux (in addition to two EP releases — all on the long-running Minneapolis art-rock label De Stijl), reveals a singer-songwriter with the incredibly rare power of immediate communication. You can compare her to others who’ve come before — even names ranging from Abbey Lincoln to Bob Dylan and (the curse of every recent singer who happens to be female) Cat Power’s Chan Marshall — but only in that Fohr shares their unmistakeable and arresting ability to connect the personal with the universal. Like a bolt, she makes listeners understand exactly where she’s coming from, and where they stand in relation, and what it all means. Clearly, as a musician, Fohr is an artist in full, and as an artist, she is constantly in motion.