*100 copies limited edition* Erica Dawn Lyle has been described by Pitchfork as a “punk hero,” which, though true, feels like an insufficiently specific term to describe her multifaceted presence and work. Colonial Motels is in fact rawly personal, a ladder out of an abyss of mourning as well as a determination to persevere and connect. Playing less but achieving more, this album captures the engaging intensity and directness that defines Lyle’s art, performance, and activism. Part I builds on patient looping and guitar body play, then gradually disintegrates into a gale of analog and digital noise stabbed with howling guitar calls. A blaring coda strips the electric guitar down to the primes before an abrupt end. Part II starts intense and cathartic, and stays that way, a heavily textured sonic wall which slowly undulates like an animated topographical map simultaneously receding and growing. 

The pieces seem to encourage a listening level that could be described as provocative, and Lyle’s guitar contains elements of squallish noise, employing to its advantage the overload of all apparatuses involved. But it also contains a masterful degree of space in which to catch the hypnotic repetition of desert blues, subtly weird pedal experimentation, unselfconscious playfulness, and aural hallucinations. Astonishingly, these pieces feel meditatively paced even as they reach peak intensity, enabling the listener to briefly rest in contemplation while in the eye of a storm about which most guitarists can only cower or fantasize.