Sitting between an indie rock and pop place, and creating a more fleshed out and unpredictably deep sound in the aftermath, Scotland’s Idlewild bring something special. Between a range of catchy tracks, they offer up as many fun riffs as they do friction in the sound, to create something that’s never too easy, but always tangible. The churning fire to “Stay Out of Place” makes for a bulky and pounding track, that also howls with a winter wind in its bones. Alternatively, “Like I Had Before” is a light and bouncy synth melody driven track, that feels in the vein of “Born to Run.” Meanwhile, “It’s Not the First Time” shuffles along with a bright hopefulness, and a sound that blends a bit of the Shins and what can only be described as the melodrama of an anime outro song. They nail a fun dynamic range on “I Wish I Wrote It Down,” leaving a spacey and then immediately punchy track, that rises higher thanks to its ability to use those two different sounds to contrast and boost each other higher.
There’s a slowly blooming charm on Austra’s latest single, as there’s barely more than gasps for the first half-minute, until the commanding fabric of her voice starts pulling us forward. Letting the electronics build and slowly crank up in the mix, “Siren Song,” feels like having your mind slowly expanded through the song’s journey. Once you get those glorious bells, rising above the pounding bass notes and the ricocheting beats, the song hits a new plateau, with Austra bringing her own harmonies in, and creating a flowing wave of sound. By the time it hits its massive, dance club-ready finale, the wandering, and truly siren-esque, calls in the back become this magical footprint in the song that no one else could bring quite like her.
Olivia Dean’s rich voice is already such an overpowering tool that she could rely on that to a fault, but she creates so many vivid and comforting worlds in her work that her voice never feels like the only thing making it work. In an album that lets its core sound colour everything around it, Dean is more like the magnet that is steering the ship, and guiding where all the exciting tones are ultimately going, in a record that takes modern R&B and soul into a new frontier. With a smooth and gliding bass, Dean is floating on “Nice to Each Other,” as the rhythm lets her create a warm and wholesome groove track to promote being better for one another. While less musically dynamic, the sonic world of the record is still sharp on “Lady Lady,” as Dean is dancing vocally with her own harmonies to create a fun back and forth between the two. The shining example of how powerful Dean’s voice and charisma can be together is “So Easy (To Fall in Love),” as she takes a bouncy guitar and charms your ears into a cute little ditty that slowly becomes more and more mesmerizing as the pianos and smaller vocals sprinkle into its tapestry. As the 80s synths and guitar sounds take charge on “Man I Need,” the story of trying to cut through all the lost time and just making romance beautiful makes the song a truly lush and sunny track, leaving you dazzled from top to bottom.
There’s a spacey glide that’s oddly calming to Demsky’s latest single, leaving you like someone caught in a cool breeze before its bass and drums drop in. The sizzle and pop of the electronics feel like stars all over the track, pulling you through a surrealistic trip through a futuristic galaxy. And right as the song begins to feel like it’s starting to repeat, the beats and percussion get frantic, exploding every couple of bars to send your hips shaking. The whole mix swells and ebbs like it’s breathing, with every line of cool air coming out with a little synthetic edge to its bones.
Watching Mac DeMarco slowly deconstruct his sound in recent years has been fascinating in some ways, and frustrating in others, as he hones in on small details and the basics, but never expands the sound back out. Like the long deluge of Angel Olsen’s acoustic material, this album is a cool trip through DeMarco’s ability to craft a song in its structure and essential parts, but it can feel samey and like treading water when he’s not going beyond showing off his knack for toying with the genre’s building blocks. “Shining” sets off the album on a small and sombre tone, as DeMarco laments his inability to hold onto love over the lightest of jangling guitars. “Phantom” is about as classic as simple guitar ballads go without becoming actually boring, as the sound properly highlights the pained emotions at play, and guide it just enough to find a home. The unique colourations DeMarco plays with on “Rock and Roll” provide a comforting guitar sway, though one that ultimately feels a little one-note in its delivery, as satisfying as some of the vocal points can be. The more morose and haunted feeling of “Home” combines with a Beatles-esque run of mini riffs, effectively creating a ghostly memory of a track, and one that lives in the bedroom-recording-like sound of the album to create something that feels like a lost artifact of someone’s life in a touching way.
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