(2022) Letting Up Despite Great Faults - IV          


Review:
Although Austin, Texas dream pop purveyors Letting Up Despite Great Faults delivered an EP in 2017, the enumeratively titled IV marks their first full-length release in 8 years. When preparing the album, bandleader Michael Lee decided to lift the “shield” of synths and filters present on earlier LPs while at the same time pushing vocals up in the mix. Though IV does represent a step into higher fidelity, fans will be glad to know that hazy layers of guitars and more-limited synths remain, as do passages of indecipherable lyrics, which seem to move in and out of cloud cover throughout the set. This rededication to woolly textures is established on the swirly introductory track “Kisses,” whose celestial, wordless voice samples (by Annah Fisette) and trebly acoustic jangle peer through beds of rhythmic, sweetly humming atmosphere. The album soon locks into more-defined, danceable rhythms with “Corners Pressed,” whose crisp drums and breathy vocals by Lee are accompanied by syncopated guitar countermelodies and buzzy sheets of harmonic atmosphere. Another giddy, uptempo track, “Gorgeous,” if even more exhilarated, follows a similar formula, landing like the Cure’s most romantically effervescent moments without seeming to imitate. They’ve almost completely dropped the clubbier New Order references of prior material here, though the band’s timbral and melodic influence comes through on tracks like the bittersweetly poppy “She Spins” (“She says she only spins for you/Do you remember all the words you used to hurt me?”) and the melancholy, fear-concerned “New Ground,” which ends in a rasp of fractured dissonance. Following a second two-minute instrumental track, the downcast but driving “Curl,” the album closes on “Self-Portrait.” Like a noisier “Just Like Heaven,” it’s an uplifting, arms-overhead, boy-girl dance into the post-nightclub sunrise. While memorable tunes are less important than feels for this project, IV has its share of solid songs, with hooks that withstand and sometimes thrive in their submergence. — AMG





Track List:
1.Kisses 01:44
2.Corners Pressed 03:19
3.Softly, Bravely 02:57
4.Gorgeous 03:09
5.New Ground 03:03
6.Gemini 03:32
7.She Spins 02:58
8.Tumble 02:45
9.Curl 01:54
10.Self-Portrait 03:23


Media Report:
Genre: dream-pop, shoegaze
Country: USA
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits


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