The Burlington, Vermont band first known use make home-recorded music with an extraordinary tolerance for extremes. Their debut EP “Yielding” ranges from acoustic softness through to dream pop suspension and heavy shoegaze choruses (all of which can happen in the same song). Kaukonen’s voice is a very present voice throughout all of that. Fitzpatrick’s guitar and the arrangements around it are what provide the shifting space. The pleasure is in following their choices.
“Semantics” establishes the approach through contrast. It starts off quite gently acoustically, builds up to a full chorus, then the dynamics shift again. The way it returns to a lighter playing and the way the next heavy section then comes in is very physical. There’s a real sense of excitement in that interplay, particularly when the sweetness of the singing runs into the sheer weight of the guitars.
On “Mirage’ airy dream pop is the trick again. The band have another tool in their kit to play with scale. Experimental harmonies are used to great effect over a generally inviting pop vocal, introducing quite unusual harmonic combinations into a piece of music that is otherwise quite soft and easy going. There are rewards to be had at this level too in the way a harmony can alter the emotional quality of a piece or the way a simple phrase can be given character by the arrangement around it.
“Roadkill” takes that obsession with vocal layering even further. Against a rather stumbling rhythm and a much slower tempo, Kaukonen’s long drawn out delivery just sinks into the harmonies and backing vocals. You can’t really pick out individual phrases from the vocal mass. It’s a very effective move towards something quite unnerving, the rhythm keeping you just a little bit off balance as the singing stretches over it.
Electronic atmosphere once again broadens their palette on “Synthesis’ with a rather contemporary alternative rock sound, a kind of experimental pop-rock. The whole record is about the way the familiar can be manipulated in different ways. An acoustic guitar can be used to generate a very heavy chorus. A very soft voice can be the very heart of a very enveloping, almost spectral arrangement. They get a lot of mileage out of those relationships.
On “A knife” the long notes and hazy textures encourage a very different way of listening. The experimentalism is still there, just spread out over a very hypnotic conclusion which gives the ear time to settle into each of the long sustained sounds. “Yielding” is what earns that conclusion through the volatility that comes before. After all the shifts in pressure and density, to just stay in one atmosphere is in itself a kind of reward.
*This review was made possible by MusoSoup
