Eiko Ishibashi glows through the ashes on Antigone

“Ashes fall in August / In October, the blood shines,” Eiko Ishibashi sings in Japanese near the end of “October,” the opening track from Antigone. “Covered with ashes, long winter / Spring is yet to come,” she begins on the following track, “Coma.” Her new album is named for the tragic Sophocles heroine, sentenced to be buried alive after attempting to give her brother a proper burial against the orders of the king; across its songs, one can find grim observations like these, sung serenely over layers of lush instrumentation.

Antigone is Ishibashi’s first songs-based record since 2018’s The Dream My Bones Dream, an astounding sound world inspired by her father’s death. Like that project, Antigone is a fully immersive experience, pulling the listener down complex emotional currents so gently one hardly notices they’re being taken. In the interim, the Japanese composer, keyboardist, and singer-songwriter has released several instrumental albums, including two scores for the films of Ryūsuke Hamaguchi. In both movies, Drive My Car and Evil Does Not Exist, her music runs on separate, parallel tracks to stories drenched in sadness. The music can feel inscrutable at times, but it’s never neutral. In the latter score, for instance, she subtly pushes back against the Japanese concept of “shiawaze,” the banal happiness that is ostensibly achieved by surrendering one’s individuality for a perceived greater good.

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“October” begins and ends with snatches of prerecorded sound — live symphony strings littered with crowd sound, snatches of two-way radio chatter. Breaking through the noise, its interior is fleshy and airy at once, full of steady instrumental phrases that leave few gaps but seem to ask more questions than they answer. Her accompaniment on “Coma” is more self-assured, pointed at a uniform end point. Whereas “October” presents us with a scene of devastation watched helplessly from a “control tower,” “Coma” ends with a revelation: “Strip off time that doesn’t stop / Searching for impenetrable love / A rainbow of tears that never appear,” she sings. “Your never-ending rage runs through the tiresome night / Your intolerable worries break your closed heart and flow out to the furthest ocean.”

These sounds that undergird these lyrics are provided by Ishibashi herself (piano, Rhodes, synths), her partner Jim O’Rourke (synths, Bass VI, drum machine), and Tatsuhisa Yamamoto (drums), with bassist Marty Holoubek joining on most tracks and several other players appearing throughout the album. Kalle Moberg’s pedal steel-inspired accordion, for instance, lends a lonesome country-western feel to “Coma.” And Kei Matsumaru’s alto and tenor sax help “Trial” achieve its Pat Metheny groove, which persists until a thundercloud bass line from Holoubek shatters the sunny illusion. “The fragment of words becomes rain, bombarding the roof / Sound of violence, death is any time now,” Ishibashi sings.

Ishibashi’s metaphors are funny at times — a Mona Lisa emoji at a charity gala here, a San Francisco sportswear princess there. They’re rarely escapist, though: The former setting is marked by “caviar, champagne, cocaine” (in English), and “thong” (in Japanese), underscored by a gooey, grandiose waltz. Meanwhile genocide is “glimpsing through each day.” On the LP’s closing, title track, she literalizes her gallows humor: “On a summer day, gathered in the graveyard, we laugh,” she sings, later adding, “Spectre of death envelops the table, big laughs.” Time and again on Antigone, our nonchalance toward the horrors of the world magnifies them tenfold. Just as the Greek Antigone’s unjust demise destroys its perpetrator’s life — King Creon’s son and wife commit suicide in short succession after Antigone’s death — perversions of the natural order are met with great suffering.

The most earnest song on Antigone is also the album’s most immediately touching. “Nothing As,” the only track sung solely in English, is stripped back both lyrically and instrumentally, leaving the doomsaying ennui of the rest of the record behind. “Nothing as a place to be / A place where you’re not there,” she begins over warped Rhodes keys, with minimal drums and bass following close behind. “Any time I start to think about how slow it goes, it passes time,” she sings later. “I take a drink and let it slow me down.” It’s a heartbreaking message, but one we’re ready to receive without padded packaging. We’re used to hearing intense, emotional songs about personal grief; reflecting on our complicity in genocide and climate collapse is a far more bitter pill to swallow.

Amid its plush trappings, Antigone is an unflinching look at the end of the world. Still, it’s not a hopeless album. As the apocalypse crashes in slow motion around Ishibashi’s shoulders, her voice glows strong and bright, emitting a light that couldn’t survive if she’d really given up on us.