Constantly straddling folk beauty with dance euphoria, Sylvan Esso hit artistic highs on their latest album. While it’s pulling back from being punchy, the record is at times their quietest and at others, their loudest album to date. There’s a fun shift from tape-like dreams to a beautiful chant on “Entertainment & Coca-Cola,” as you feel drawn into a world of simple pleasures, and how they can bring the sweetest memories. The band is at their most angry and blown-out on “Hot Slob,” as they swap to borderline pop punk for a grimy, fun time, with neon riffs and their usual ear for production bringing out all those beautiful tones they get out of the vocals and keys. There’s a full art-pop approach to the harmony-laden attack of “Sledge,” where you feel like a tangible, rustic person is emerging from a world of 8-bit aesthetics over the course of the song’s clashing tones. The swinging beats and flow of “Right to Left” lets a more malaise-tinged vocal slowly bring you into a comforting flow of trying to make things a little easier on yourself!
The jagged pop of “Une Seule Vie” immediately cuts through its other silky tones, giving a fresh sonic palette to play with, and one that feels immediately rich and diverse. With low-end string synths that would make Justice blush, the track will have you bouncing to its rhythms from the get-go. And Angèle immediately pulls you with every vocal hook, either soaring or gasping into a totally unusual melody that feels singular the moment you hear it. Her natural flow into the choruses also has a weird sense of a rising tension that makes each feel unnerving, and that it’s constantly mounting pressure by the second.
It’s hard to place exactly where the sound of Soft Loft lands, but in their ethereal tones and harmonic beauty, they create something all their own. Using quiet contrast to really flesh out a sense of growing excitement in their songs, the band has mastery of slow-rolling dynamics that plays to their favour over and over. There’s a magic within the rustic charms of “Gravity’s Pull,” as the highs ring like sprites and the effects slowly bloom with other sounds on the track to create a feeling of otherworldly wonder. “Wednesdays” takes a more direct indie-rock charge, and creates a chilly yet glowing track that expands more and more into an ecstatic cry. There’s a bit of Olivia Rodrigo-esque overtones to the yells of “F U Want It,” though it spins it with sounds that feel closer to that of a Lucius track, if anything. “Caught” rushes with a rhythmic and vocal burn that feels totally unique from the rest of the record, and lets each chorus explode with a frustrated fury that’s been waiting years to be put into words.
In one of her shorter entries, Empress Of takes a sugarier pop approach than usual, to let her knack for lush detail shine in ways we wouldn’t normally expect. With the track bubbling with video game-esque details, there’s a fun meshing that these sounds find with her already glossy voice. But it’s the contrast with the deeper beats and hefty bass hits that shows the range she has with her sound right now. Though the track is overall a lighter effort in terms of the usually more biting dream-state pop she tends to make, it’s cool to see her pushing in more radio-specific directions.
It’s rare to hear strings so crisply played as you can on Laura Veirs’ latest record, where one feels like they’re listening to the songs the woods want you to hear. Just as you think you’ve figured out “Arc Still Bends,” the track opens with a rainbow of new light shimmering in like a heavenly ray, showing you a whole new dimension and emotion. “Feeling Returns” sets off much the same way, but once the layers enter like new winds crossing each other, Veirs starts to build the track into something wholly bigger. There’s a much fuller sound in the shifting grooves of “Flying into Darkness,” with Veirs immediately taking a more sorceress-like approach to her vocals and arranging instruments as if commanding nature itself to sing melodies around her core, rather than simply building pieces. With the harps swirling around a void-evoking bass drone, Veirs runs “Sunlight and Doom” as a surrealist vision of menace, with her ghostly howls in the outro giving a particularly haunting punch to the rustic affair.
