This 12th album by the Californian experimental electro-pop, postpunk band led by singer Jaime Stewart with Angela Seo may be the most unusual of year, an oddball set of diverse duets with many guests that sometimes has the melodramatic quality of later Scott Walker. Sometimes veering towards challenging impenetrability and the abstract and otherworldly, particularly I Dream Of Someone Else Entirely, or One Hundred Years, a crashing 80s postpunk-goth number, at other times catchy and poppy (A Bottle of Rum), this is one that very much grows after a few listens. The guests include Alice Bag, Valerie Diaz, Drab Majesty, Haley Fohr, Liz Harris, Liars, Owen Pallett, Fabrizio Modonese Palumbo, Susanne Sachsse, Greg Saunier, Angela Seo, Shearwater, Twin Shadow, Sharon Van Etten, and Chelsea Wolfe. Stewart’s voice, overarching it all, also echoes David Bowie’s deeper, darker work, as well as that of Stuart Staples of Tindersticks, steeped in melancholy, at times almost ghostly, cracking, and disembodied, at at other times, powerful and projecting a torch song style. Of these, Sharon Van Etten whisperingly complements that particular style perfectly on opener Sad Mezcalita. Different again is stompy Rumpus Room to the sweeping pop of the single A Bottle of Rum with Liz Harris, which has something of New Order about it, or the eccentric stringy kling-klang and chatter of the title track with Susanne Sachsse. In more ways than one, it’s out there – and on Polyvinyl Records.
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