Leaning into the far ends of fractured distortion while stripping down the tones for their most beautiful tracks yet, Youth Lagoon offers two distinct flavours on their latest record. More blown out than before, “Speed Freak” sees Trevor Powers letting his soothing tones fill out the song’s textures, and be the counterpoint to a heavy and damaged story. “Gumshoe (Dracula from Arkansas” splashes brash drumming and an unnerving mix of harmonies on top of an otherwise folk-pop core, making for a dazzling swirl of approaches that all rise together in heavenly bridges through Powers’ design. The depth of the sound on “Lucy Takes a Picture” crafts such a mesmerizing world of echoes and percussive beauty that it can almost distract you from how powerful the strings, harmonies and synth stings can be. In the more interlude-esque “My Beautiful Girl,” we get a lost VHS kind of disintegrated sound, as Powers paints us a slice in the day of a few people’s lives in a way that will open up your heart.
In its spacey glow, the debut single from former Altin Gün singer Merve (aka Merve Daşdemir) feels like the sound of her old band woven through a sci-fi lens. Bringing a little of that Angelo Badalamenti “Twin Peaks” mood, with her cutting voice, the song can be like a fine silk at times and then a sparkling night sky at others. Among touches of her Turkish influences, the likes of Yaz, Kate Bush and perhaps some Cocteau Twins echo come to mind, though the song truly lives in a dark roll of synths and Merve’s own harmonic cries.
A rare band to bring back quirky acoustic pop without getting too sparse for its own good, Horsegirl takes all the right lessons from their influences. After it builds from its charmingly clunky opening, “2468” gets a catchy little folk charge of simple riffs and call-alongs that layer on top of each other until they’ve made a track that feels like a finessed take on a campfire classic. “Julie” takes a more floating direction out of this overall approach to the arrangements, creating something that might be almost too loose at times, but always brings a calming warmth. “Switch Over” has the band on a focused fury, calling back and forth to themselves, and letting those grinding guitars create a buzzing euphoria to dance around to with glee. Mixing bits of earlier Belle & Sebastian and a little Kimya Dawson, “Frontrunner” has this poetic whimsy to it, while being just sparse enough to let some of its riffs feel non-specifically European in a bizarre musical way that just lures you closer.
As they take a little more time to give their constructions room to be quiet and sparse, Tennis create a new kind of intimacy on their latest single. This slow-burn lets the building arrangements and triumphant chorus almost feel like a magical overflowing of love and desire, reciprocated or not, as all the colours rush through your heart and soul. Ironically, this gives their little bell-like keys an almost hot-meets-cold effect as you’re ripped right back out of the fantasy and back to reality, trying to merge the two worlds again. As the vocal calls into the ether grow louder and multiply, the song closes in its own dreamy haze, perhaps lost in its hopes, or finally able to surrender to them happily.
Adding a formal band to the mix, Sharon Van Etten has used the opportunity to get weird and add more electronic elements into her sound. A great evolution and shift in where one might have expected her to go next; this album definitely sees her sound getting bigger, but across compositions that aren’t where we expected them to be, and in the best way possible. While the humming synths can feel like a far cry from Van Etten’s usual crooning, “Afterlife” soon burns with such a fiery layering of guitars and powerful arrangements that you’ll be more lost in the dance of all its layers than focusing on where each one comes from. Like some Springsteen with a more sophisticated production, “Idiot Box” lets its haze and neon riffs build a slow but iconic wave of noise, taking such a simple band charge and making something truly overwhelming out of it. The bass leads the conversation on “Trouble,” working as more of a band choral meditation than classic song structure, so that you’re finding yourself pulled in and out of refrains as it moves along. “Southern Life (What It Must Be Like)” kicks with a sunburnt kind of discordance, with Van Etten flexing her range to swap from siren to groan across the song’s massive-sounding echo effects.
