SPOTLIGHTS

Love & Decay

IPECAC

Post-rock wonderment from the wistful Brooklyn Heights

Blending clamorous waves of doom with more ethereal influences like shoegaze and psychedelia, this Brooklyn trio’s latest marks their most focused and ambitious work to date. In grand, post-rock tradition, Love & Decay is built around the dynamic tensions between soft melodies and towering, fuck-off climaxes. Mountains Of Decay sees wrecking-ball drums smash into walls of feedback-drenched riffage before burning off into a stridently spacey outro. Mario Quintero’s bewitching riffs rise to Baroness-like heights on Far From Falling and album standout, The

Beauty Of Forgetting. Wild experimentalism abounds throughout and yet, there’s familiar territory here to make this an immediate and very enjoyable listen. ■■■■■■■■■■

FOR FANS OF: Kylesa,

King Woman, Smashing Pumpkins …Sadness often sounds disturbed, like it’s trying to wash away the stain left by an anxiety dream. Amid jostling dynamics on tracks like The Illusion and Bury Me, the quartet sound like Touché Amoré suffocating in an invisible noose of mental suffering. Yet when Hollow and Always explode in a storm of colossal, gauzy guitars, there are brief flushes of warmth to be found as the album walks the line between cinematic and claustrophobic. For a debut record, this is quite a statement. ■■■■■■■■■■

FOR FANS OF: Touché Amoré, Defeater, Svalbard