Youth Lagoon Expands Sound And Soul On 'Savage Hills Ballroom'

If ever there were any doubt that Trevor Powers’ efforts as Youth Lagoon presented his own inner-workings in a genuinely vulnerable light, Savage Hills Ballroom acts as a visceral offertory to the remaining doubters.

Powers took up a two-month residency with Bristol, London based producer, Ali Chant (Perfume Genius, She & Him), recording and adapting his solitary narratives into more relatable motifs than albums past. It suggests an emotional actualization brought upon by the drowning of a close friend in Powers’ native Boise, Idaho in 2013. Understandably so, the death had great effect on Powers, propelling him to cancel a string of dates.

Where Youth Lagoon’s first two albums, The Year of Hibernation (2011) and Wondrous Bughouse (2013), played into the solitude of Powers’ being, Savage Hills Ballroom presents a more extrinsic aspect of Powers’ psyche. SHB’s opening track, “Officer Telephone” initially acts as a misdirect for the album’s course. The Wurlitzer-y ambling paired with Powers’ noticeably post-production-less vocals harkens to Youth Lagoon days of old with a slight twist. A minute into the track, however, Powers turns the track on its head in the best of ways with a psych-folk rock breakdown and layered vocals ushering in an irrefutably divergent Youth Lagoon, only marred by an abrupt fadeout come far too soon.

“Highway Patrol Stungun” continues the startlingly in-your-face emotionalism that would seem to be the SHB norm. Powers offers unfamiliarly inclusive lines, such as “remember when no one danced the same / we all had a voice/we all had a name.” The composition of the track mimics the expressive lyricism, with less post-production wizardry and more warmth from strings and keys.

Other songs on SHB continue the remarkable deviation from introspective opining to highly associative accounts of what can only be assumed to be aspects of Powers’ emotional navigation since his friend’s passing in 2013. “The Knower” offers particularly familiar tones of sorrow and personal delusion: “oh, everybody wants to think they’re good at heart when they’re full of hate/oh, everybody wants to think their luck will change, when there’s no such thing.” Disconcerting realities of the everyman are prevalent throughout, but none more familiar than the opening line of “Rotten Human”: “How are we supposed to know what’s real?” Whether or not Powers’ intentions for lines such as the one referenced are intended to be highly relatable or not, the motif is beguiling nonetheless.

Appetizing lyrical and composition departures aside, SHB is not without the familiar dream pop musings that garnered Youth Lagoon its praise. Songs like “Doll’s Estate” and album closer “X-Ray” offer highly introspective glimpses into the soul of the album, despite both songs’ lack of lyrics.

Savage Hills Ballroom is an excitable coping mechanism framed with universal themes and existential crises. It is Youth Lagoon at its core, but vigorously distinct from preceding records. The change is good, if not grand, presenting Powers’ musings and idiosyncrasies in a more performative state.   

CHVRCHES Play It Safe On 'Every Open Eye'

Chrvches’ 2013 debut, The Bones of What We Believe, was a magnificent triumph in skirting boundary between indie and pop – it was palatable enough for the uninitiated to listen unperturbed, but layered enough for the most jaded of audiophiles to listen as a sort of guilty pleasure. And those hooks, by god, those hooks sent the album over the edge. With sharp barbs steeped in emotional defiance and vulnerability placed on top of intoxicating sans-guitar synth riffs, it was a throwback to the shoulder pad pop of the 80s and championing the new-age feminism of the modern era.

Tracks like “The Mother We Share” had become ubiquitous in all of media; the band received a menagerie of awards (2014 NME “Best New Band” included) and the hype train eventually led to a feature on a Hunger Games soundtrack. Despite having reached what most would consider being the precipice of mainstream success, Lauren Mayberry and her CHVRCHES cohorts (Iain Cook and Martin Doherty) continued to masterfully toe the line of synth pop.

Critical admiration and mainstream proximity notwithstanding, CHVRCHES’ ascension into the limelight was not without some conflict. In the latter part of 2013, Mayberry (a former journalist) penned an op-ed in the UK’s The Guardian addressing the perverse misogyny that “being a band born on the Internet” had garnered them during their rise. Mayberry’s op-ed went viral, virtually solidifying her as a torchbearer of gender equality and social justice.

Following their yearlong victory lap of headlining festival slots and blogosphere adulation, the Glasgow trio announced in December of 2014 that “work on album two starts in January (2015).” Fast forward a year and a half, and CHVRCHES announces they’ve completed the album, priming the release of Every Open Eye for September 25, 2015.

If there was ever any fear that CHVRCHES would elect to spurn the synth-pop anthems that made The Bones of What We Believesuch a massive success, they’ve been quelled in Every Open Eye. The sophomore effort plays like an extension of Bones, but not much more.

“Never Ending Circles” opens Every Open Eye with the same lyrical edge and expansive soundscape as any track on Bones – Cook and Doherty weave their razor layered synth compositions to accentuate Mayberry’s empowering hook “here’s to taking what you came for/and here’s to running off the pain.”

Following the robust first track, “Leave a Trace,” offers up another Bones-esque synth pop anthem. Arguably the album’s tent pole track, Mayberry’s hook of “take care to bury all that you can/take care to leave a trace of a man,” further asserting the lead singer’s role in empowering the individual.

The rest of the album begins to drop off in rather startling fashion, with each track maintaining the CHVRCHES sound of starry synth layering and clever lyricism with glints of irascibility, but as far as preserving the anthemic resonance of the album’s open, tracks like “Keep You On My Side,” and “Clearest Blue,” begin to sound more like Chrvches B-sides, begging the question of whether or not the trio’s limited respite between albums one and two had begun to burden band’s process.

Even with the formulaic familiarity of the middle of the album, Every Open Eye still manages to maintain the listener’s attention with tracks like “High Enough To Carry You Over,” in which Mayberry’s manic pixie dream girl fervor is traded for one of the two male member’s run-of-the-mill indie pop timbre. An admirable attempt in exhibiting some versatility, but the endeavor ultimately leaves the listener ready for Mayberry’s return. Maybe that was the intention, and if so, bravo.

The end of album simply comes and goes before it can even be acknowledged. “Afterglow” is the closing track and presents an intriguing departure from the rest of Every Open Eye. Simple in composition, but cinematic in scope, it presents a more intimate (albeit trope heavy) side to Mayberry’s lyrical prose – “With all of the light and shape/we take up our own space/I’ll find my own way back/back to the past tense.”

All in all, Every Open Eye leaves much to be desired in maintaining and elevating the complexities that were presented in The Bones of What We Believe. Yes, the infectious hooks and shoulder pad riffs are there in tracks like “Leave a Trace” and “Never Ending Circles,” however they're starkly lacking the same sense of urgency of CHVRCHES tracks past. While Every Open Eye is nothing less of an above average sophomoric effort, one could probably concede that CHVRCHES' enlivened zeal seems to have fallen off ever so slightly, as if the band were only biding their time.

Wig Out With Dream Culture’s Kaleidoscopic 'Post Habitual' EP

Cover art by Mac Stewart

Dream Culture are a relatively new Athens, GA purveyor of psychedelia in its most modern sense. On their odd Picasso adorned second EP, Post Habitual, they fine tune their sound and double down on their contemporary influences to create a great little slice of psychedelic pastiche.

Now, I say pastiche here because their influences shine through not unlike that Crazy Diamond we all know and love. However, it isn’t Pink Floyd they’re sounding like here, but rather Tame Impala and Unknown Mortal Orchestra. Everything from percussion style, the impressive crunch of guitar, their choice of synthesizers, and even how the vocals are mixed in bring forth elements of both the aforementioned groups’ second albums.

While this does give Dream Culture’s overall sound on this album a very derivative feeling, this is not completely to their detriment. The band plays with an earnest tenacity that can't be denied on this album, and they sound like they had a hell of a time recording this biz. Come for the kaleidoscopic grooves, stay because it’s too much fun not to.

Sample the EP with two standout tracks "Doesn't Have To Be" and "EveryDay" below. Post Habitual is out now on Moeke Records and you can buy it in full here.

Destroyer Ushers in a 'Poison Season'

Ah, Dan Bejar, with your linen shirts, lah-dah-dahs and wonderfully verbose lyrical content, welcome back. After four long years, Poison Season is Destroyer’s latest offering to the industry he loves to routinely criticize.

What initially comes to mind is how it might compare to the preceding record, 2011's Kaputt, though you can’t approach this LP the same way. It's not that the two aren’t comparable, though; the players on Poison Season were all part of the band Bejar put together for the Kaputt tour. 

What we have here, however, is an altogether different album. For those who were introduced to the world of Destroyer with Kaputt, it could be feasible they might not like Poison Season; Gone are the new age ambient workouts like "Poor In Love" and the sad-boy disco stomp of that damn near perfect title-track. Poison Season is a live band playing Destroyer songs, and good ones at that.

That's not to say that the ambience is completely lost, as evident in "The River"’s soothing presence, it’s just presented differently. In interviews Bejar has compared this setup he’s got going on to the likes of Billy Joel, and, at risk of sounding like a yes-man, yes, the instrumentation does remind a bit of Billy Joel and the like.

Above everything, though, we still have Bejar’s sense of melody and always outstanding understanding of why English can be such a cool language when put to music. His deft turns of speech and beautifully surreal imagery (like on "Forces From Above"), ear for little details (the lone saxophone in the right speaker holding its note out at the end of "Times Square" just does things to me, man), and deft use of older lyrical cliches for his own purposes ("Sun in the Sky") all serve as reminders that Dan Bejar knows what he’s doing here.

Let the record wash over you. Pay attention to what he has to say because, hell, whatever it is he’s trying to say sounds really pretty when he says it.

Circa Waves’ Debut 'Young Chasers' is Youthful, Clean, and Fresh

Circa Wave's debut album Young Chasers has already been out in UK for a few months now, but has ridden a high wave (yes, wave) to American shores this weekend. Two years after DJ and producer Zane Lowe declared their single "Stuck in my Teeth" his "Hottest Record in the World," Circa Waves have finally released an LP featuring it and the band's preceding EP's  title-track "T-Shirt Weather." In addition to the old favorites of dedicated fans, this official debut is made up of solid light rock tracks that shine with a simplistic tribute to clean indie pop. No electronic noise or artificial synthesizers, just clear guitar riffs and beautiful melodies.

With so many far down the rabbit hole of over-mixed and over-produced sounds, a pop act without all the tricks and magic is youthful, clean, and fresh. Channeling the spirit of Two Door Cinema Club and The Kooks with some Favourite Worst Nightmare-era Arctic Monkeys underlying their feel of an eternal beach day, Young Chasers is a perfect pavement of the band’s presence on the indie pop scene.

The album opens with the three previously released singles, a risky choice if not for the catchiness of the tunes. Starting with "Get Away," a clear, vibrant, and colorful vibe blooms with the beginning track. A fan favorite since it’s original release, track number two, "T-Shirt Weather" carries on that energy and pokes at the foggy memory of that summer party in a low lit room with your closest friends and some accidental strangers. Mimicking the polished rebirths of bands like Walk The Moon, Circa Waves re-recorded "Stuck in My Teeth" and "Good For Me" for the album, both which were released almost two years ago, and the updated versions strongly highlight the group’s maturity in sound and confidence. 

As for the new songs, frontman Kieran Shudall laces each with a perfectly partnered melody and riff that hit every nostalgic nerve of the indie lover’s soul. Standout "Best Years" cries for a fleeting youth and a time that passes too quickly, a feeling familiar to every person (if you don’t agree, you’re lying to yourself). Sun-kissed melodies and boyish charm build each track to perfection, with many a song teeming with chart potential. 

Circa Waves’ talent in building very consistent songs off the very well recognized “indie guitar band” sound has been the center of concern for critics of the band, but truthfully speaking, it has been too long since we’ve had an album with substance that was just pure fun. As a debut, Young Chasers is an impressive record and pays homage to that perfect adolescent summer we all deserve.

Young Chasers is out now via Transgressive/Virgin EMI

Beirut's 'No No No' Not Light as a Feather, But An Easy Stroll

Close and nearby, as if you could reach out and touch it, Beirut's latest release No No No is a tangible indie-pop meditation that's gone before you know it. Though not particularly groundbreaking, the surprisingly clean and square record at hand is an accessible evolutionary companion to its 2011 predecessor, The Rip Tide. 

Both records have less of the melancholic desperation inherent in some of the Balkan-inspired baroque pop of their earlier years and stay at a moderate easy-listening tempo, with "August Holland" conjuring the most '60's pop the project has ever ventured. And yet, all that is Beirut remains, just with some of the edges rounded off.

Instrumentally a straight shooter, most of the album is wrapped around unaffected Rhodes and piano at its core, and at times it feels as if Beiruit is imitating itself but with less ambition in the production.  Other than an aptly timed chewy cycle of piano / Rhodes on "Perth" (with a Mellotron fade out to boot) this is the lone track where keyboards layer and diversify, unusual for a band traditionally lacking guitar. 

At a restive pace of three minutes a song, the record is a safe haven for a habit of four cord repetitions. And as always, a savior from the risk of monotony, Zach Condon's dulcet tones somehow hold you. The first two tracks are an assertive announcement of indie-alt-pop intent for all brand of familiar strangers to the band, either because you don't know them or because it's been awhile. The opening tribal membranophone of "Gibraltar" demands immediate movement (with a sneaky snare drum on the inside) that couples quickly with a bare bones piano block chording its way through your friendly neighborhood major scale; soon a sizzling shaker grants a sense of spontaneity, strolling like a crisp bite Apple commercial on a clear blue day in urban landscape of somewhere. Glowing vibrato in the vocals aid and abet, before all quickly immerses into a constant cycle of the same chords, accentuated with our ever present piano hopping on the offbeat, alongside harsh claps of what are certainly not hands, but are asking to be. Once the shivering tambourine  joins and the bass grounds circuit, the design of repetition works. The bass trades only briefly with a humming sine wave synth that keeps us on our toes, and some giving and taking away of instruments (for pacing concerns) hold the reins in long enough for a Fleet Foxes vocal bridge, but with just enough headphone bleed and off center downbeats across instruments to make us feel like we are in the apartment tracking the vocal ourselves.

The eponymous number "No No No" is second out of the gate, and it's initial transition sounds like a demo song on an old Casio that was clearly the inspiration for what's about to follow, as it is immediately chased off by its HiFi evolutionary ancestor, but cheats its way back in under the surface halfway through. This is really just a continuation of track 1, what with an almost identical layout instrumentally, merely dropping a half step and trading the piano's major 7th for a Rhodes's minor 7th, and vocal harmonies for a lush horn section at track's end. It is a proper table of contents for what's to come, never breaking stride or design and never lasting too long. And yet it's the one you want to hear more of, as the rising pentatonic trumpets swirl higher and glide on yet suddenly stop.  This is, after all, supposed to leave you wanting the rest of the record.

The following "August Holland" is a lazy Ringo on the drums and McCartney on the keys enough for anybody, and "Perth" is the gem of the dig, all reaching their destination in the closer 'So Allowed' with its '60's 6/8 waltz and small orchestral overture expanded by a subtle organ for a wider end that sounds much like where the record began.

In it's brevity, the plaintive yet efficient motion at work has a warmth and comfort not unlike all previous instantiations of Beirut, though again less a strange intensity.  The earnest mid-aughts brass and strings orchestrations that have always worked so well for Beirut are ever present, and provide a pleasant strength (see the swelling instrumental in "As Needed") though perhaps like the keys less adventurous than before. This adds to the feeling that you're in the room for a live session that could have been written and recorded in one weekend.

There's still that spirit of a DIY mixing treatment here also. As they are often called where the sausage is made, there are some 'artifacts' of imperfection present that a casual listener may not notice or find a bother, but is a hallmark and asset of many favorite recordings where the performance is the "it factor" to capture or at least feigned.  Beirut does whatever it likes, and knows how to give its songs room to breathe, and personally I enjoy the less quantized and mechanized.

Condon's vocals are a lilting yearn of a tenor, a gentle dialect at once Robin Pecknold and Julian Casablancas, though his a more slow motion croon. At times lyrics are difficult to discern more so than before, vanishing a bit more into the music more than usual. But this isn't crippling and may be a function of what's at work: ensuring repeated listens.

With less of the emotional stakes as fellow proto-hipster architects like Sufjan Stevens, this effort evokes more of the sonic clarity of an Andrew Bird aesthetic but perhaps composed and mixed with even more populist sensibilities.  The more cynical among us may be tempted to find No No No a bit distant and meek, as is often the case when artists venture into what are shallower sonic waters, and that may be true in comparison to previous weight. But more optimistic fans of Condon and co. will see this album moves with a purpose and does not meander, much like a recent (though darker) contemporary Star Wars by Wilco.  Each has its own confidence. 

Where it may fail in epiphany, it succeeds in consistency. It is a good meal, not an opus. While likely more a triumph for the mid-2000's vs the current decade, it knows what it wants. If it's weak, it doesn't care. Lovers of Beirut will likely enjoy the familiar formula, and newcomers should find it a gateway to their oeuvre. It does not pretend to be profound and is at least on the surface likely the more accessible the band has ever been; a good friend but not one you always have deep conversations with. A record of effortless, simple symmetry, where everything seems to happen only "as needed."

No No No is out now via 4AD.

After Three Year Silence, Last Dinosaurs Finally Speak on 'Wellness'

Three years ago Brisbane quartet Last Dinosaurs released their debut album In A Million Years, setting their sound as light, guitar-based indie pop. In the time since, this hidden Australian jewel has gone through band reorganizations with a bass player replacement and intense musical rediscovery before finally releasing their sophomore album, Wellness. 

Opening with “Take Your Time," which starts with a forest of sounds that mimicking tongue clicks and raindrops, Wellness then glides into the lead single reminiscent of their debut sound, “Evie." Wellness continues to track a sporadic lineup throughout, yet the album stands as a cohesive collection due to the ethereal dance-floor rhythms present within each track, similar to the sounds of early-80’s pop projects. With silky electric guitars and a vocals that are over-mixed in both volume and pitch to stand out, this album lifts with its riffs without losing the Last Dinosaurs sound that fans grew to love three years ago. 

Throughout the writing process, Last Dinosaurs built unique, in-house pedals from scratch, naming them, and eventually the songs made with them, "Evie" and the title-track "Wellness." Each song has a specific backing sound created with a specific pedal, unique to the band and the story, a tedious process that paid off. It’s this attention to detail that builds Wellness into the great piece of music it really is.

For example, “Wellness” itself is one of the slower beat tunes on the record, holding an ever-present, wavering silver string that quivers with the sadness of the afterlife of a lost lover. Followed with the second single, “Apollo”, a quickstep guitar song, the softness of “Wellness” is even more impressive while the upbeat nature of “Apollo” is even harder to miss up against it. Without disrupting the singularity of each track, Last Dinosaurs pulls together the full story of loving, losing, and moving on.

Foals Elevate Power and Control on 'What Went Down'

Foals’ reputation as one of the best live acts of the current generation should by no means detract from their recorded efforts; what is kinetic energy on stage drips and pulses through the grooves of both the vinyl and the music itself. Even their spinning wax can elicit more rapture than many live acts today, still you can’t help but feel What Went Down is the best advertisement for an impending tour a band could hope for.

Absolutely massacring the starting gate with the title track, guitarist and vocalist Yannis Philippakis and co. conquest straight through the heavier territories they had only previously visited with “Inhaler.” Complete with cover art evoking the horror movie style of The Ring, it’s a downright animalist and violent first impression. Recorded in the same village in the south of France where, according to the press release, "Van Gogh was hospitalised after savaging his own ear,” you have to wonder if there's something in the water; “What Went Down” savages your ears just the same, one steamrolling riff and punchy howl at a time. Philippakis claims to have "buried his heart in a pit in the south,” and if he’s truly left part of himself in that soil we can only imagine what will grow out of it next.

In terms of the track listing it's quickly revealed what follows, however. “I drive my car without the breaks,” Philippakis recklessly informs in the radio ready yet earnest “Mountain At My Gates,” but with the way he expertly steers through the hazardous path you can enjoy the throttling ride. "Birch Tree” then implores “Meet me by the river / See how time flows,” nodding to the evolution of the Oxfordshire rockers’ discographical transition. 

“The city I was born in / Left a long time ago,” he recalls over jumpy guitar reminiscent of “Total Life Forever.” Having come far from their mathy and youthful debut Antidotes to the angsty, self-exploratory sprawl of Total Life Forever, Foals breakout album was arguably 2013’s Holy Fire on which they honed their seeping vulnerability and visceral guitar hooks into a full-bodied masterpiece. That veteran professionalism expands on their newest LP, and while its newfound comfort verges on the slippery slope to arena rock at times it never falls prey to the completely jaded polish of rock stars past their prime. The scent of blood and the hunger that drives them towards it is still there, even if it’s smeared across Philippakis own face now post-fistfight. Aggressive, confident, and tight, they’ve unabashedly taken "over your town;” no longer looking for space, Foals have found it and are asserting dominance over it.

It may be the fullest sounding record they’ve made, but with this increase in depth comes the least dynamism they’ve exhibited in a while, slowing down from then on to hit a bit of a midrange that consumes the majority of the record. “Give It All” explores a hint of oriental melodies behind its unequivocally English breakup lament “But you’re there by the tube stop in the freezing rain / You caught the bus and I caught the train / All that remains are words in the rain,” while “Albatross” carefully ascends like a more bombastic Coldplay. This lull is still just "the shade of a thunder cloud,” though, as the smooth sailing soon thrusts us over the rocky rapids adorning a sheer cliff-face, leaving us to hold on for dear life.

Unlike the name suggests, “Snake Oil” is the real deal, giving What Went Down its second peak to rival the high-flying opening. Rumbling along before lashing out venomously, “Snake Oil” is an earthquake in a hurricane and it takes hold of you with a most raucous and primal eruption of adrenaline, leaving you longing for that date circled on your calendar when Philippakis can smash it into your face in person. With lyrical moments of classic pop platitude like "You cast a spell that keeps me wired / Keeps me red, keeps me on fire,” it’s not the deepest of sentiments in Foals’ repertoire, but it’s one of the most boldly presented, and with a body like that, who cares?

From “Night Swimmers” superb afrobeat drive to the vaguely twisted-Lorde sway of "London Thunder”’s emotional self-awareness, the sea storm then settles to gently lapping waves with “A Knife In The Ocean”'s rolling takeoff into a restless end.

So what went down? A turntable stylus, a hapless swimmer, and 49 minutes of unadulterated power that never seems heavy handed, valleys that never seem lazy, and, if you’re lucky enough to be there, Philippakis himself as his body leaves the stage and lands on top of you.

What Went Down is available now via Warner Music. You can buy it here.

Beach House's 'Depression Cherry' is Velvet Textured Cloud

“There’s a place I want to take you,” beckons Victoria Legrand over gently marching percussion in the appropriately titled opening track, “Levitation.” If you’re a Beach House fan, it’s a place you’ve been many times before, floating just above the atmosphere. 

While the French-American vocalist and guitarist Alex Scally’s fifth album Depression Cherry, like the rest of their dream pop discography, has a direction in mind, it’s at the mercy of its listener, with Legrand cooing, “I’ll go anywhere you want me to” shortly after.

Beach House, like most of their genre, don’t demand. Like dreams themselves, their soundscapes are what you make them. Manipulated within your own head, whether consciously or not, they can fade, ignored into background obscurity, or completely envelop you as you lie entranced on a thick, soft carpet of the ethereal.

Following “Levitation,” Depression Cherry comes back down to Earth with the second song, “Sparks.” An outlier in style, it’s a sort of waking from this dream, jolting the status quo with a fuzzier, harsher edge. This leading single seemed like a sign of something new, but ultimately comes off as a cherry-red herring as the record then relapses back into the sad, comfortable formula Beach House have perfected since their formation in 2004.

While this may be disappointing to those who lament the “same album over and over” approach and were hoping for some diversification, it’s hard to fault a group who has found their niche and carved it so deeply. Descriptors like “dreamy,” wistful,” and “lazy” have become, well, lazy over the years, but lazy is exactly how it all still feels, like a record player stuck on a lower speed. Though that is not meant negatively; this lull deceives those who are quick to write off their sound as boring or indistinct.

That being said, Depression Cherry doesn’t quite scale the sheer heights of the duo’s preceding two records, Bloom or Teen Dream, but largely by fault of Beach House setting the bar so high themselves. While those perfect moments mixed their ephemera with just the right amount of dynamism, Depression Cherry lacks some of that extra punch overall. The subsequent “Space Song," for all it’s echoing of “fall back into place,” does offer it, however, and it soars through the stars with sparkling synth beats in exactly the way an intergalactic swim might sound if the waves could exist in a vacuum at all.

And it’s exactly a vacuum in which Beach House want to exist. In an official statement they explain that the new record is what happened when they "let [them]selves evolve while fully ignoring the commercial context in which [they] exist,” shut away from it all. Even the relatively controlled environments of their own shows apparently dislocated them from their comfort zone, claiming “[T]he growing success... larger stages and bigger rooms naturally drove us towards a louder, more aggressive place; a place farther from our natural tendencies.”

So what was already so simple has become more so. While the red velvet vinyl sleeve reminiscent of Bee Gees’ Odessa adds further texture, even their trend of solid, monochromatic cover art is simplified further, with the minimalist details of Teen Dream’s faint zebra stripes and Bloom’s dots vanquished in favor of pure, unadulterated stasis. At first (and second) listen it’s easy to glaze over the music in a similar way, though give it a chance and out of the homogeny come swirls of beauty. In a particular Beach House-y touch, the duo even handpicked select lyrics to display on their official Sub Pop site, aware of how hard it can be for listeners to distinguish them on their own.

On that same page they describe the record as "a color, a place, a feeling, an energy,” and it's represented literally on the sleeve. Like the seat cushion in that old chair at your grandmother’s, you can brush your fingers along Depression Cherry’s sonic textures one way to make it change shade as the fibers lean, then smooth it back out the other way again. You can spin your fingertip in a spiral, or make stripes, but it’s all still a surface level alteration in a cloud.

"The first thing that I do before I get into your house / I'm gonna tear off all the petals from the rose that's in your mouth,” “Beyond Love" quietly stabs, showing Legrand at her most aggressive. Breathing restless life into the ambient haze she wrestles, "I really wanna know / I really do breathe / We really do breathe / We really wanna know.” 

These lyrical tones juxtaposed amidst the careful caress of the organ and slide guitar could leave a casual listener gliding by, blissfully unaware of the deeper, more forceful current rushing below the surface of gilded waters lapping calmly at his boat, yet that makes their realization all the more powerful. Legrand claws at you from the inside whether you're aware of it or not.

Later on, the spoken word alternating with a fleeting, slowed-down mirroring of John and Yoko’s “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” melody before captivatingly pleading guitar is layered with an angelic chorus makes the curiously named “PPP" a standout moment of not only the LP but their career. In “Bluebird” we find what is likely the only time Legrand will lie to you, as she soothingly misleads, “I would not ever try to capture you,” before “Days of Candy” ends Depression Cherry as fittingly as it began with the sendoff, “I know it comes too soon / The universe is riding off with you."

Whether it takes you where Legrand first longed to end up or not is up to you.

Depression Cherry is out now via Sub Pop. You can enter to win a red velvet poster for free here. You can buy the record here.

The Fratellis Mature With 'Eyes Wide, Tongue Tied'

Like so many bands with outstanding breakout albums, the temptation for fans to use their earliest works as a benchmark for any subsequent albums is huge, and almost impossible to resist. Very few artists start off high and carry on climbing (Arctic Monkeys being a good example), but the majority of bands with breakout debuts, such as The Strokes, Cage the Elephant, and even Nirvana, suffer from a decline in popularity after their follow-up efforts fail to hit the exact heights previously climbed.

The trick with these albums is to listen to them as if they were completely new acts. If you don’t have "Ain’t No Rest For The Wicked" playing in your head, Cage the Elephant’s Melophobia is plain fantastic, while, Nevermind aside, In Utero could be by far and away Nirvana’s best work. It’s this same perspective that you have to take when spinning Glasgow-based rockers The Fratellis' fourth studio album, Eyes Wide, Tongue Tied; it's nowhere near Costello Music, but once you give it a chance, you might find you like it all the same. 

The opening track, "Me and The Devil," is a prime example of how The Fratellis have evolved in the nine years since their smashing debut; it’s much lighter on the guitar and the scratchy, raw vocals that were prevalent in songs such as "Chelsea Dagger" or "Flathead." It’s a more refined sound, and although in previous LPs Here We Stand or We Need Medicine it falls flat, it’s clear that guitarist Jon, bassist Barry, and drummer Mince have gone back to the drawing board this time and come out with a coherent effort to appease their fans. They spent a great deal of time in the United States and it shows, particularly in Bruce Springsteen-inspired "Desperate Guy" and the superstitiously swinging "Dogtown." There are still the some glimpses at nostalgia, though, with callbacks to their first album, most notably in "Rosanna" and "Baby Don’t You Lie To Me!"

That being said, the first half of the album is far better than the second half. À la First Impressions of Earth, it loses momentum quickly, meandering through more nondescript songs with influences that become slightly heavy-handed. All the same, Eyes Wide, Tongue Tied represents a more mature evolution of the band, and is generally a step in the right direction. Costello Music may be long gone, but there's still life left in The Fratellis.