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Dream pop duo Beach House released this nice split for last week’s annual Record Store Day along with B-side “Equal Mind.” Both tracks are off their upcoming album Bloom, which is about as anticipated as anything this year amongst the blogosphere crowd. It’s traditional Beach House, with vocalist Victoria Legrand’s androgynous vocals lilting lazily over a hazy sea of keyboards, guitars and washed out drums. Bloom is set to drop May 15.
For those only familiar with Matthew Ward’s work as the Him in Zooey Deschanel’s pastiche to ‘60s pop and aw-shucks charm in She & Him, A Wasteland Companion opener “Clean Slate (For Alex & El Goodo)” is probably a bit of a curveball. Yet after years of working behind the curtain in both She & Him and with more outspoken rock revivalists Conor Oberst, Jim James and Mike Mogis in the Monsters of Folk, this is the M. Ward longtime fans will be delighted to hear – Ward’s husky, ashen voice ruminating over barely there acoustic strumming, losing itself in the simple campfire pleasures of storytelling and the barely there hiss of an AM radio. Ward’s production talents really started to shine through with his last solo effort, 2009’s Hold Time, and the aforementioned work with She & Him and his more esteemed partners in Monsters of Folk hit on familiar Ward touchstones: Brill Building pop, Chuck Berry homage, and dyed-in-the-wool ‘60s Americana. A Wasteland Companion, Ward’s seventh album, continues to touch on all of these influences at one point or another. “Clean Slate” is where Ward’s heart belongs though, resting in the shadowy period between the blues and British Invasion pop, a time when recording on more than one track was a studio trick in itself. The sparse tribute to Big Star is striking in its simplicity, and although A Wasteland Companion goes to great lengths to show Ward’s dexterity as a producer, few artists can transport a listener as easily as Ward does on “Clean Slate” with just an acoustic and that inimitable voice.
The first half of A Wasteland Companion suffers from Ward’s seeming desire to do everything at once – from the contemplative folk of “Clean Slate” he rushes into the heady “Primitive Folk,” which, with its ivory pounding and lovelorn attitude, comes off as strangely tossed off, the kind of song Ward could write in his sleep. That near flawless acoustic interlude seguing into the foreboding “Me and My Shadow,” however, is just the kind of sleight-of-hand musicianship that Ward can make seem effortless. While “Primitive Girl” and “Me and My Shadow” ostensibly seem quite different, in both tone and structure, they nevertheless hail from that same sepia-toned early ‘60s soundscape that Ward has been worshipping for years. Yet where the former arrives as a pale imitation of his best homages, “Me and My Shadow” is at times threatening and alive in a way “Primitive Girl” only hints at, something the sexy, ragged guitar mini-solo certainly contributes to. Yet from there Ward throws in the requisite Deschanel duet (Daniel Johnston cover “Sweetheart,” which comes off as a wannabe She & Him B-side) and a strangely jaunty, incredibly out of place Louis Armstrong cover (“I Get Ideas”).
So A Wasteland Companion, at least initially, seems determined to continue the ideal of Ward as a new classicist in American pop music, deconstructing the sounds of the past and re-imagining them in the present to create something fresh. This works well with the pointedly nostalgic She & Him and the one-off mission of Monsters of Folk, but in the context of Ward’s own discography it’s unnecessary, as the second half of the record proves. Ward is still the same classicist he’s always been on a song like “The First Time I Ran Away,” a student of Guthrie and Holly and well-traveled dirt roads, but “The First Time I Ran Away” feels indubitably organic whereas “Primitive Girl” sounds like a cover. That lovely strumming, the insistent bass drum beat echoing in the background, a touch of synths – it all accentuates an atmosphere Ward painstakingly crafts to sound like all his favorite old records, yet imbues with his own feeling and straightforward lyrical narratives. The twanginess of the title track increases in direct proportion to the distant background sounds of a crowd Ward interposes over the hum of strings, and it’s nostalgic and affecting, but it touches something more primal and natural than the candy-coated pop hooks of the first half.
Ward’s disparate influences will always have a huge pull on him, along with his continually growing production experience, but the beauty in his solo work has always been his take on this lesser known tangent of Americana. Not the pop foundations he mastered and made famous with She & Him, but the shuffling acoustic ramblings of “Wild Goose” and the gospel-tinged blues worship in “Pure Joy” – the frayed, graying tones of what people first loved about rock ‘n roll, not the rose-colored hues of She & Him but the grit of country blues and the haze of static. A Wasteland Companion at first seems unsure of what it wants to be or where it wants to go, vacillating between various genre exercises rooted in a common retro theme, but by the end it reaffirms what those who’ve loved Ward’s old work have always known – there’s plenty of poignancy in just a guitar pick.
M. Ward – “Me and My Shadow (ft. Zooey Deschanel)”
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Matt Ward’s eighth album and his first one after receiving some mainstream attention with Zooey Deschanel in She & Him, A Wasteland Companion is a tale of two Wards; the ’50s rock, retro tones that he’s mastered with She & Him, the pop influence emphasized and the production beefed up (in this respect, it’s an outgrowth from his work with Conor Oberst and Jim James in Monsters of Folk); and the whispery AM folk of his earlier work, the shadow of static drifting over everything. “Pure Joy” is an example of that latter sort, and hearkens back to some of his great past albums like 2005′s Transistor Radio. Old school, simple, and timeless.
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While still an album obsessed with death and what may come after, A Church That Fits Our Needs is strangely hopeful even while it relates to the deepest parts of grief, a contemplation of past and present rather than a tear-stained farewell. Frontman and main creative force Ari Picker wrote this after his cancer-stricken mother killed herself shortly after his wedding in 2009, and, yes, A Church That Fits Our Needs is a hard listen. But it’s a triumphant one, celebrating the muse on the cover as often as it mourns her passing. Picker has stated that he wanted to provide his mother, an artist, “a space, in the music, to be, and to become all the things she didn’t get a chance to be when she was alive.” It’s less a funeral march than a memorial, finally arriving at the lush intersection of folk, pop and classical music that Picker has been threatening to master for years. Stuck in a sort of creative stasis with the release and re-release of his debut EP and LP over the past few years, perhaps it was this life changing event that was what Picker really needed to discover himself as his own artist. A Church That Fits Our Needs realizes all the potential that All Alone In An Empty House promised, and Picker, a Berklee College of Music graduate whose has written first orchestral work was for the North Carolina Symphony, melds all the various threads of his influences into a cohesive, heartbreaking whole.
There’s shades of the loss that permeated Arcade Fire’s Funeral here, a tinge of Radiohead’s chilly baroque arrangements, and the kind of orchestral finessing that Jonsi could appreciate; there’s also a heavy Stravinsky influence and the sweeping cinematic quality of film scorers like Nino Rota. In Picker’s arrangements, though, there’s a distinctly American quality – the sound of rushing rivers, the hushed crack of leaves in a wintry forest. The gentle finger picking and dramatic strings paint a chromatic, vivid picture in songs like the stately, melancholy “Icy River,” where Picker’s crystal clear tenor completes everything: “Icy river / put your arms around my mother / I burned her body in the furnace / till all that’s left was her glory.” Picker’s lyrics dabble in the crushingly intimate as well as the darkly fantastical – veiled lyrics about dead birds and golden eyelids, with nature imagery and archetypal discussions about heart and the hereafter predominating. It’s a soundscape that seems to revel in life rather than death, and it’s this verve and melodic enthusiasm that prevents A Church That Fits Our Needs from becoming a one-note lamentation.
Though it’s Picker’s lyrics that provide the emotional punch, it’s his superb technical skills that make A Church That Fits Our Needs so much more than a simple outpouring of grief. Picker enjoys playing around with meter, and his complex use of strings and use of fellow vocalist Emma Nadeau’s airy whisper dabbles in dissonance but always somehow manages to return to a resolving major lift. “As you close your eyes from the water / a golden light wanders with the birds / where have you been, what have you seen / all the peace when you come following / I’ll tell you it’s worth it all,” Picker sings on “Golden Eyelids,” and there’s the major key surge, an optimistic murmur, but there’s also a hidden tension in the taut, haunting strings that threaten in the background, swirling up in a gusty ostinato. For much of The Church That Fits Our Needs, there’s that struggle to find peace, to reconcile the lessons and traits he’s inherited from his mother with her untimely, senseless death. “My song can try / but there are things that songs can’t say,” Picker sings with more than a touch of sad finality on the closing lines of “Vines,” his voice close to breaking on the last couplet: “Am I hopeless? I trust you, but where are we walking to?”
It’s an appropriate theme for the record, where the loss of a loved one is not just something that can never be found again but is also an opportunity to reflect and cherish. It’s a theme that is also not necessarily resolved by the time “Vines” ends, although the harrowing gut-punch combo that is the tender ballad “This Dead Bird is Beautiful,” and the cleansing stomp of “Garden” comes closest. The former is the kind of bare acoustic piece that leaves no room for subtlety, Picker defiantly reminding himself that he’ll “always have her eyes,” while the latter picks up all the tense and pensive wonderings of the past eight songs and brings them crashing down in a cathartic wave of emotion, apocalyptic strings and percussion. It’s an exhausting listen, but what A Church That Fits Our Needs does so well is how it makes this loss palatable – the grief is real and heartfelt and sometimes overwhelming, but in its honesty and the warm instrumentation that Picker has mastered, it’s thoughtful and all too easy to get lost in. Even when there seems to be nothing left, there’s still simple beauty in life, Picker seems to say on “An Artist’s Song;” “So sing out your hymn of faith / cause I have none / your song is my armor.” It’s an odd sort of comfort, but it’s a comfort nonetheless, and if nothing else A Church That Fits Our Needs provides something to hang on to: memories. In that respect, it’s a fitting monument to Picker’s mother as she was, not how she ended, and it’s a touching, affirming milestone in his own career.
Lost in the Trees – “Golden Eyelids”
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Bouncy indie pop from this trio from Brooklyn, whose Amber Papini reminds me a bit of Regina Spektor on a drama-free day. Although they’ve been around since 2007, they just released their debut self-titled LP near the tail end of January, and it’s one of the better indie pop efforts of 2012 so far. Check it out if you like Tennis, Chairlift, etc.
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For all the press lauding this as the comeback of one of modern indie’s more venerable acts, Port of Morrow sounds strangely suspended in time, caught in between the ghosts of its past and a far more promising future. Ostensibly it’s an album that showcases everything that made the Shins great; maybe not change-your-life amazing, but certainly one of the defining acts of the ‘00s, workmanlike indie pushed over the top by frontman James Mercer’s distinctive tenor and his remarkable melodic talents. Yet the James Mercer who was beginning to emerge on 2007’s underrated Wincing the Night Away does not always sound like the James Mercer in rare indie pop form on Port of Morrow, except perhaps in the slinky, sexy titular closer, which is so distinct from the rest of the material here that it almost seems like a tacked on bonus track. “Simple Song” has been derided for being just that – with the punchy guitars, Mercer’s trademark shift to a higher register, and clever wordplay, it seems like a Shins song concocted in some hellishly cheery, Zach Braff-run indie pop factory via carefully worded specifications (insert backing vocals here, add a dash of piano throughout). “Simple Song” is near flawless as a pop song, but it’s that inevitable feeling of déjà vu that makes it and much of Port of Morrow predictable rather than truly stirring.
Mercer’s more recent work with Danger Mouse in Broken Bells and even much of Wincing the Night Away foreshadowed an accomplished songwriter finally stepping out from his own considerable shadow. A song like “Red Rabbits” or “Sea Legs” from the latter reveled in different textures and a more experimental take on indie pop, and in doing so it revealed a Mercer who was comfortable in growing as a songwriter, still an ace with those hooks and a pristinely recorded guitar but more interested in seeing where these studio explorations would take him. His later remarks that he had felt stifled working in the Shins, recruitment of an entirely new backing band, and enlistment of producer Greg Kurstin (of fellow indie poppers The Bird and the Bee) pointed to a continuance of that more expansive direction, but for the most part, Port of Morrow slips in neatly between Oh, Inverted World and Chutes Too Narrow on the CD rack. This is not a bad thing when Mercer is able to recapture the intimate spirit of those records, as he does on the lovely “September,” which, for all of “Simple Song’s” inherent craft, is the most quintessentially Shins song here. The light strum of Mercer’s acoustic guitar and the dreamy haze that drifts around the song like a summer dew gives it a nakedly honest feeling of newfound romance that “New Slang” nailed so perfectly, a feeling summed up in a classic Mercer line: “love is the ink in the well when her body writes” (Braff would love that!).
“September” is quiet and thoughtful, and in the context of the rest of Port of Morrow it jumps out at you for precisely that reason. The flip side of Mercer’s studio proficiency is the double-edged sword of perfectionism, which was never a problem when Mercer was laying down a couple backing vocals and a guitar track but tends to overwhelm on MOR-fluff like the schmaltzy “For A Fool” or the even cheesier “It’s Only Life,” which features lyrics that drip clichés and a short guitar solo that can be seen coming from miles away. It’s hard to fault Kurstin here for doing what he does best, and combining his production skills with Mercer’s songwriting is bound to lead to some stunners – opener “The Rifle’s Spiral,” for instance, is just the kind of stomping pop that Kurstin does so well, an incessant guitar riff and some bouncy drumming pushing one of Mercer’s better melodies forward. Where “The Rifle’s Spiral” surges, however, other songs merely sound exceedingly well produced; the cheerful, ringing guitar on “No Way Down” and the festive percussion and funky guitar on “Bait and Switch” are all well and good, with polished hooks and a production sheen that practically sparkles in the higher tones and kicks hard and cleanly in the lower. Yet, whether it’s because of Mercer’s so-consistent-it’s-almost-boring vocal excellence or the fact that the hooks tend to blend into one another after a series of up tempo, vaguely rocking pop master classes, Kurstin’s focus on a glossy, slick aesthetic rarely serves to enhance Mercer’s songs.
Then again, this is James Mercer, and these songs are nevertheless uniformly outstanding, another ten Exhibit As (in a long line of them) in the case for Mercer as one of the best songwriters of his generation. For all its AM dial affinity, “40 Mark Strasse” has the kind of soaring, overwhelming chorus that one can’t help but smile at, even if the idea of soft rock makes one sort of queasy. And that title track is a necessary revelation that Port of Morrow takes too long in getting to – in its ghostly synth work and the delightfully weird effect on Mercer’s falsetto throughout, it’s the logical heir to Wincing the Night Away’s oddball moments and Broken Bells more chromatic hues. Yet Port of Morrow seems much more a step sideways than forward for Mercer, not so much a dramatic comeback but more a compilation of greatest hits masquerading as new songs. We already knew Mercer could write a great Shins album – the question now is if he can ever become more than just the Shins.
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It’s not exactly Sonny Moore leaving post-hardcore to twiddle knobs and worship at the altar of day-glo paint and Ecstasy as Skrillex, but the ease with which Christian Karlsson and Pontus Winnberg have transitioned from crafting Top 40 epics as Bloodshy & Avant (see: Britney Spears – “Toxic”) to playing 260 shows and landing festival headlining slots as live band Miike Snow is nearly as impressive, not to mention eminently more listenable. Their self-titled debut was an unassuming collection of electro pop gems that rocketed to indie stardom on the backs of singles like “Animal” and “Black and Blue.” It was the kind of genre fusion Karlsson and Winnberg have been doing for years, a dynamic blend of dance, house and indie music, but the addition of versatile vocalist Andrew Wyatt and the emphasis on live instruments made Miike Snow that rarest of specimens: a fully-formed band right out the gate, with a cutting-edge electro album that sounded fresh and vital rather than a recycled MGMT-lite.
Happy to You, happily enough, is not a mere retread of Miike Snow, which wouldn’t have been surprising given the band’s grueling touring schedule and the fact that, well, a song like “Animal” is good for some serious airplay. Their signature sound is still electronic, marrying the pop sensibilities of Vampire Weekend with the feverish beats of Passion Pit and the grimier atmosphere of the clubs Karlsson and Winnberg have long been accustomed to. While Karlsson and Winnberg and their beatmaking savvy remain the backbone, Happy to You reveals itself as more of a diverse record than its predecessor. Things are much more textured, the trio clearly reveling in the live sound that they had perfected on the road rather than grounding themselves firmly in the electronics of their debut. The melodies seem largely more fleshed out, given extra weight by the fuller sounds the band more often than not embrace. “Devil’s Work” highlights the differences between the two records: in its reverb-heavy piano vamp, haunting tonal shifts and Wyatt’s ghostly vocals, it’s reminiscent of what made Miike Snow tracks like “Silvia” so successful; yet Wyatt’s voice in the chorus is awash not in synths but in lush strings and a swelling brass melody. It’s the natural link between their debut and this record, the precursor to the almost twee organ and martial drum rolls on the psychedelic “Bavarian #1 (Say You Will)” and the sparkling indie pop of “Archipelago,” where a whistle solo and a sunnily propulsive chorus reminiscent of the Shins belie Wyatt’s typically subversive lyrics.
First single “Paddling Out” is most likely to captivate fans of “Animal,” with an insistent, syncopated beat and a similar contrast between the song’s infectious tone and melancholy lyrics (“there’s someone here who laughs too hard at everything” begins the chorus), but for all the band’s efforts, there is nothing here that approaches the immediacy of Miike Snow. It’s a necessary trade-off, perhaps, as Happy to You is much more of a proper album, to be listened to as an entire whole, than Miike Snow ever was. It’s an up-and-down ride, and while there is not really a “bad” song, per se, on here (I find it hard to believe pop professionals like Karlsson and Winnberg could even write a bunk hook), there isn’t a gripping, defining standout like “Silvia.” Centerpiece “God Help This Divorce” comes the closest, its dreamy, Revolver-esque textures warping a straightforward (yet decidedly dark) ballad into a kaleidoscopic display of the band’s studio prowess, and it’s notable too in that it is easily the furthest of all the songs here from their earlier work.
That decision to expand their sound and focus more on the links between where they were and where they want to go is the true treat of Happy to You. It’s evident in the percolating, stygian synths of “Black Tin Box,” which uses Lykke Li’s throaty voice to great effect in creating a threatening, foreboding mood, or in the sparse drums and surging bursts of noise on the twitchy “Vase.” And where a song like “Paddling Out” or “Devil’s Work” likely would have made much more sense as an opener, “Enter The Joker’s Lair,” with its skittish drums, see-sawing electronics, and general preference for skirting around its melody with bleeps and bloops rather than driving it home, stands out as the band’s clear mission statement for the album – don’t be afraid to shake things up. Happy to You is not as arresting as Miike Snow, nor will it likely make as much of an immediate impact. But for a genre well versed in sophomore stagnation, Miike Snow’s willingness to test their boundaries is a pleasant surprise.
Miike Snow – “God Help This Divorce”
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Geographer fits in quite nicely with your synth-oriented indie outfits – your Starfucker, your Discovery – but the rub isn’t in the electronics or spot-on melodies, but rather in Michael Deni’s voice, which could more fittingly be likened to that of an angel (or Ra Ra Riot’s Wes Miles, if we’re going by earthly comparisons). It’s his soaring alto that directs everything with soulful ease, but it’s also Nathan Blaz’s electric cello and the careful layering of electronic effects, filters and reverbs and loops stacked precariously on top of each other, that make Geographer more than just your average electro band. Their second LP, Myth, came out on Modern Art at the end of February – “Lover’s Game” is a sunny standout in typically triumphant Geographer fashion. I also happened to see them live this past Sunday and heartily recommend catching them in your town if you can – they sound even better live.
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It’s usually easy for me to pick one song from a new album – highlight the obvious standout, pick one with the innately catchy melody, choose something that means something to me, etc. – so it says something when, after listening to Andrew Bird’s seventh proper solo album (tenth altogether) Break It Yourself, the only thing I wanted to post was all fourteen tracks. The good part about this problem is I could have picked any song at random and it would have been a fine representation of Bird’s Americana-tinged, baroque folk approach. Seriously, if you like what you hear, do yourself a favor and buy the whole of Break It Yourself, which comes out today. “Hole In The Ocean Floor” would have been the optimal choice, but the eight-minute-plus song length doesn’t really do itself any favors in a blog format. “Danse Carribe,” with its violin breakdown and pastoral melody, is about as good a snapshot as any of what Bird does so well.
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Anticipation continues to build for Miike Snow’s sophomore album, which is scheduled for a March 26 release. The group has so far released two songs from the upcoming record (the first of which you can hear here), and the remixes are already starting to flow in. None hit so hard as electro producer Wolfgang Gartner’s reworking of “Paddling Out,” which transforms the original into a banging electro number with a heavy club-oriented feel. Just saw Gartner a few weeks back at Surrender Nightclub in Las Vegas; very much looking forward to seeing Miike Snow at Coachella 2012 - everything other time I’ve seen them live has been an absolute blast.
Miike Snow – “Paddling Out (Wolfgang Gartner Remix)”
It’s been nearly three years, but fans of Regina Spektor finally got a taste of new material with the studio version of “All The Rowboats” dropping this past Tuesday. It’s the first single from her upcoming album What We Saw From The Cheap Seats, her sixth release and tentatively scheduled for a May date. Spektor has performed this song live for years, but with Mike Elizondo behind the boards again as he was on Far, it has been fleshed out with a skittering drum pattern and the paranoid piano melody sounds better than ever. Far might have been my favorite all-around Spektor release due to the bigger production and her growth as a songwriter; hopefully What We Saw From The Cheap Seats continues this progressive arc for Spektor.
Regina Spektor – “All The Rowboats”
The concept surrounding Ghostory is flimsy at best – the running narrative of a girl named Lafaye and all the ghosts that one would expect to surround a girl with such a Victorian name. The loss of Claudia Deheza robs School of Seven Bells of one of their most distinctive characteristics, the angelic, unearthly harmonizing between Claudia and twin sister Alejandra. Yet Ghostory, the band’s third record and their first as a duo, is uncommonly strong and surefooted, a remarkable transformation of their gossamer-thin dream pop into something vigorous and visceral. Where 2010’s lackluster Disconnect from Desire was all style and little substance, Ghostory is surprisingly forceful and direct in its message, one that melds almost seamlessly the sublime drone of My Bloody Valentine with the nostalgia of M83. It’s dreamy and hopelessly untethered from straightforward pop, like School of Seven Bells have always been, yet for the first time Ghostory sounds like the work of an organic, spontaneous band, rather than the determined sculptors of hypnotic, icy shoegaze they had seemed content to remain.
Ghostory carries with it connotations of magic and spirituality, and if there’s an ideal word to describe Alejandra Deheza’s vocals, a good place to start would be “otherworldly.” Hers is a voice that prefers to soar rather than coo, speeding along through a storm of synths or layering on top of itself many times over, a more ethereal Florence Welch or a druggier Natasha Khan. At times it seems fragile, like on the soft, sprawling “Reappear,” shimmering above waves of reverb, but that’s an illusion – Deheza has never sounded as confident yet so tempestuous, more in touch with what she’s singing than ever before. School of Seven Bells have always tended to focus on the trees rather than the forest – as a result, the music they crafted was, more often than not, opulent but uncomfortably empty, something beautiful that could be admired but never touched. Opener “The Night” swiftly puts that notion to sleep: “our meeting lit a fuse in my heart / devoured me, devoured me,” Deheza sings, and it’s lovely and airy, as she always is, yet there’s a passion and a sensuality here that has been hard to find with this band.
The music seems effortless, which is an accomplishment in itself given just how complicated School of Seven Bells makes things. There’s a veritable blizzard of effects here, washing tones out while they brighten others, coalescing in misty bursts of guitar and mesmerizing drum attacks, a steady, mutating bass line bubbling constantly underneath. Benjamin Curtis’ former work as a member of The Secret Machines informs every aspect of the production here – that space-rock trio specialized in widescreen, full surround sound operas, the proggiest of the prog. That love of expanse, of wide open sound filling every space and constant shifts into lulls and crescendos, is what defines Ghostory. Deheza’s vocals are the driving force, of course, but the way Curtis makes the music dive into your headphones – at points rolling to an ecstatic high on the frantic “White Wind,” at others reducing things to a narcotic lull on “Show Me Love” – is pure feeling. There’s a heavy goth influence on things here, even as sparkling and lush as the production gets, and the drone of Cocteau Twins and the haunting new wave of Siouxsie and the Banshees, not to mention the hazy landscapes of My Bloody Valentine, are much in evidence throughout. Atmosphere is the priority here, yet it’s a testament to Curtis’ work and Deheza’s renewed fire that the songs on Ghostory stand well enough on their own. “The Night” might be the best track the duo have penned to date, concise by their own standards yet voluminous in its sound, with a hook that is as compelling as any in the band’s catalog. “Lafaye,” meanwhile, is haunting and vaguely foreboding; its melody calls to mind Florence’s “What The Water Gave Me,” but its chorus and the unexpected tonal shift are, simply put, enchanting.
It’s hard to explain what kind of emotions these songs engender, and I can imagine it will be different for everyone – that’s the beauty of this kind of dreamy canvas, where the words are much less important than the spirit of the vocals and the nebulous music. There’s the general ghost story conceit, of course, but that’s as much a smokescreen as it is a real narrative. At times I hear Alejandra talking to her twin, and there’s loss and regret, while at others, most noticeably the triumphant closer “When You Sing,” there is a simple catharsis, the culmination of a relentless drum pattern and a blizzard of instruments, not the least of which is Deheza’s vocals spinning wondrously out into a psychedelic haze. It reminds me a bit of M83’s latest, where lyrics were second to the vital, intense feelings the music offered up. It’s also incredibly hard to pin down without resorting to an embarrassing array of adjectives and metaphors. Dream pop, goth, shoegaze – call it what you want, but what School of Seven Bells have ended up with is a genuinely gorgeous record by any standard.
School of Seven Bells – “Lafaye”
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