This debut from the Montreal-based Braids is best ventured into without any expectations, as the pleasure comes from its unexpected twists and turns.
This debut from the Montreal-based Braids is best ventured into without any expectations, as the pleasure comes from its unexpected twists and turns. There’s a light, effervescent quality to album opener Lemonade: "All we want to do is laugh" is followed by actual "ha, ha ha’s". This tone betrays the darkness to come, but the threatening undercurrent is still there.
The band really hit their stride on the more traditionally song-based second track Plath Heart, where Raphaelle Standell-Preston’s vocals meld Amber and Angel from Dirty Projectors with Elizabeth Frazer (even the title sounds like a Cocteau Twins song). In the next track, Glass Deer, her vocal drifts from soft and angelic to rasping seagull calls.
The album peaks with the title track, an intoxicating centre-piece. Like Broadcast’s Echo’s Answer, it sits on a hypnotising basic chord and lets the magic revolve around its simplicity. It’s perhaps more of a mood than a song, with the band hushing, hissing and echoing vocal repercussions as percussion. It’s a good thing that Braids don’t let song count matter and instead let the seven songs breath across the 43 minutes.
The intensity lessens off slightly after Native Speaker and then drifts to a dreamy instrumental closer. It feels like a living, breathing entity and one that has been expertly structured – this is a band that knows when to inhale, when to exhale and when to blow a gale. A lot of thought has gone into this album, but Braids make it all sound effortless.
Out Now through Spunk
