The album opens with very late 80s feel to the ghostly female vocals and reverbed out jangle of the guitar. I like how things get darker on the second song and the guitar creates more of a creeping groove underneath things. The third song introduces a more androgynous as falsetto mae vocas take over creating a more Bronski Beat like sound. By the end of the song they have gone into more ofa rock distortion and more obvious male vocals. They bring a wider range of sounds to color these songs with. The atmosphere grows dense against the nuanced guitar drone of " This is The" . They are great at adding layers and turn a focus on sound into songs, which is a tricky balance most bands fail at .
"Handsome Machine" is not a gripping as the previous song. It's not bad they just have already raised the bar pretty high for themselves.At this point in the album the murky drug riddle sounds become a haze in the back of mind and I have to go back and relisten. "Compartments" reminds me a litte more of Modest Mouse, than the 4AD era post punk previously featured. The two minute instrumental "Diffuser" is more of an interlude and hard to tell where it ends and " Rock Hudson Trajedy" begins even with the ambient portion seperating them. The male croon to this song gives it the glue to hold it together, not unlike ,Merchandise. The vocals have more of a unique character to them on "Keep Left". The vocals are a little more Talking Heads like.
"Slowest Hype" is a shoe gazey ballad of a song. It moves with narcotic lethargy. This is another moment that sounds very Merchandise to me. The album ends with some quirky jerky post punk. I will give this album a 9.5 , these Brtis excelled at not only capturing the sounds , but cared enough to turn them into songs while they were at .
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