Everything runs together in a swirl, colors emerging, guitars and synths and voices and their reverberations and refractions interweaving. Its one part psychadelia, one part shoegaze, and extra dollops of Of Montreal, The Flaming Lips, and The Olivia Tremor Control's strangest melodic moments. It sounds like the 60's as filtered through most of the 00's favorite filters. Which is to say this has been done before, at least twice, and has all the trappings of a mushmouthed style I've railed against repeatedly.
And yet it works here, for two main reasons. First, it pulls out the most uncommon and essential trick in music: great songwriting. The particular structures and swirls and highs and lows and repetitions and deviations therefrom are expertly chosen to give a lilting, gorgeous experience that hypnotizes without lulling to sleep.
Second, the bass. It is the one thing that is pure, undoubled, undiluted, running Harrison-pure, giving backbone to the pulsing shapes that run rampant across the record. The bassline is what you follow, and everything else is the landscape you follow it through. That one trick lets this album rise above the swirly everynote muck that pollutes so much of modern indie rock. That and the crackerjack songwriting 4.5/5
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