Chastity Belt

I Used To Spend So Much Time Alone SUB POP. CD/DL/LP

Millennial tensions given tender, wise voice.

In case the title to the first track, Different Now, spooks fans, Chastity Belt’s third LP heralds no drastic stylistic change for the Seattle quartet, their bittersweet chords and potent, hungover melodies still a luminous vehicle for Julia Shapiro’s astute, droll observations. But while there remains a dreamy charm to their instrumental interplay – like later-period Pavement constructing slovenly lullabies – the passage of time has cast gloom over Shapiro’s lyrics, continuing her evolution from the likes of Giant Vagina off their debut, to songs like Something Else and Used To Spend, songs about gradual estrangement from your friends, the negotiation between dreams and cold reality. Not that mopey introspection is really Shapiro’s thing – she essays her millennial crises with the unsentimental wit of a Noah Baumbach – but the foggy nights of the soul chronicled here lend Chastity Belt’s bruised indie pop a weight that suits it.