23
By track two of Blonde Redhead's new digital shoegaze record, 23, you've imperceptibly fallen in love with reverb kitten Kazu Makino's supernatural voice. She's effortlessly torn you away from everything, sounding flirty and deathly, and saying creepy Twin Peaks stuff like ‘I won't come disguised again,' and ‘Lightning strikes you when you're moving'. Around her, identical twin bandmates (true story) Simone and Amadeo Pace swirl minor guitar pools, drive the drums and drench everything in delay and Mr Sandman's dust.
The whole affair is pleasingly less baroque and more hypno-pop than their last effort, Misery is a Butterfly, except perhaps on centrepieces ‘Sw' and ‘Spring and By Summer', where Misery's ghost appears briefly to play Cure-like walls of weep-synth, strobing drums and synthetic horns. 23 sounds less like Blonde Redhead titular songwriters DNA, and more like REM - the dreamy eye-thing, not the band - and is still genius. Viva the perpetual dream motion jams.
Release: Album
To Cure: Hypertension
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