Area

Area is an enigmatic dream pop trio formed in 1986 in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois and hailed as the midwest’s answer to England’s 4AD Records. They merge the seductive, breathy voice of Lynn Canfield with the radiant guitar and delicate synth inventions of Henry Frayne and Steve Jones. Lynn’s evocative and poetic lyrics travel along a spectrum between heartwarming and bittersweet while Area’s sound explores gentle spirals of emotive, fragile moods at once sad and beautiful. 

THE BOB : … prettily wafting melodies that slowly and sexily intone over spacey synthesizers. There's no denying kinship here with the merry groups of 4AD. The music of Henry Frayne and Steve Jones splits into tunes where silence is an active partner to the sparse, delicately repetitive guitars, floating and ringing minimalistic keyboards, and basses that plunk like tolling bells. Pushing above the music like a blast of winter wind comes lyricist/melodist Lynn Canfield, whose rapturously chilly voice breathes tunes (which) intensely describes the hills and valleys of her emotional landscape with clinical simplicity — until a wildly romantic odd-angled flash of memory adds a dash of symbolism to her gleefully neurotic lines.

MAGNET#37: ... enigmatic pop trio Area, the group Lynn Canfield and Henry Frayne first played in together. Frayne conjures up a radiant guitar ether that gently spirals around Canfield's emotive, fragile voice as they both mesh with Steve Jones' suitably delicate keyboards and programmed rhythms.