Chastity Belt

Chastity Belt

Indie rock band put themselves on the couch. Chastity Belt have been moving their music into ever more dreamy pop sounds; and on this cohesive fourth set, with lead vocals shared between Julia, Lydia and Gretchen, their lyrics are catching up. Sinking, drowning, drifting, and fog recur. On Effort, clean, hypnotic guitars pulse behind the knowing self-destruction of getting lost in another person…and another. “In the dark, can you tell what you’re made of?” the singer asks in Elena. These are stories about patterns of behaviour, like dreams that keep returning, or won’t end. The way out, these songs counsel, lies in relinquishing. “It takes time to really get it right… Let go of control,” says the learned narrator of It Takes Time. In Rav-4, the singer is not quite there, but getting closer. Over gently repeated guitar figures that belie the hard