Versailles and French Surrealism are cited as influences for Sun Airway’s sophomore full-length album, Soft Fall. Yeah, pretty much: with lush arrangements and massive textures of sound, Soft Fall, is a giant, gorgeous record decked with chopped-up classical music samples and hooks that envelop the listener. Sun Airway’s all-encompassing sense of maximalism echoes what M83 did last year on Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming, making the familiar, comfortable turns of pop music vibrant and fresh by infusing some reverb and a soothing synth-tone. The result is a record that feels safe - not safe in the sense that it’s dull and afraid to take risks, but safe in the way that home feels safe, in the way you know the roads, the haunts, the people, and intrinsically understand that you’re not in any danger.
Yep, we’re in dream-pop territory, and Sun Airway’s Jon Barthmus plays admirably to the genre’s strengths. Guitar and keyboard lines come together like coast and tide - the line definitely there but impossible to define. Governing it all is Barthmus’ smooth, breathy baritone, which is seductive without flair for dramatics. On album highlight “Close,” he sighs “you’ve never known loneliness before/I tried to get close to you,” which sounds pretty glum, but the song itself is practically ecstatic. The work on that is done by breakneck drums, an impressionistic Cure hook and a guitar occasionally squealing gleefully in the background. Barthmus’ understated vocals give the song room to soar, and soar it does; it’s an absolutely killer tune. Instrumental interludes are scattered throughout the LP guiding you to and from other standouts on the record like “Wild Palms” and “Symphony In White No. 2” (that also appeared together last year on the 7” vinyl single that followed the band’s beautiful debut Nocturne of Exploded Crystal Chandelier).
As is often the case with dream-pop, the sonic palette that washes melodic lines together eventually extends to the songs themselves, and while Soft Fall is never boring, the distinctions between individual tracks become less and less vital as the album gels into one solid artistic statement, which makes Soft Fall a perfect little record to escape with. It’s a great way to drop menial anxieties for nearly 45 minutes and enter a pleasant state where nothing will frighten you and you’re comfortably safe as can be making any fall more enjoyable as you take in the sights from above. Soft Fall officially drops tomorrow via Dead Oceans. - Adam Downer
Arrah and the Ferns may have sweetness and light in abundance, but the undercurrent of frank lust in their new album is both new and old hat for these folk rockers. Since their last offering, they’ve adopted growing pains as a lyrical source, to varying effects. While the album relies heavily on much of the same wistfully-ornamented indie delicacy, there’s simultaneously an explicit element, and a successful one at that. Romance isn’t dead on Make Your Mind, it’s just got a mouth on it.
The woozy, low guitars at the beginning of album are one of many instrumental stunners, which we’ve long known to be a touchstone for the Ferns. There is some spectacular guitar and drum work on the album, but for most part, the music and the vocals go head to head in friendly tandem - never trying to outdo one another.
Arrah Fisher’s honeyed vocals push through the knot of winding guitars on the second track, “Go Back,” inciting her band to back her up when she half-purrs, half-belts “I see the way your body moves me - but you don’t have to touch me.”
“Triangle” is a list of questions, an effecting device used by Fisher to protest the coming of a different stage of adulthood - one in which commitment is inevitable and freedom to do as she wants a relic of immaturity. “I wanna meet the man on the other side,” she murmurs, seeing her free-spirited inclinations in danger, and then, with a bravado outburst, demands to know “Why do I have to grow up and be a married schmuck - when all I want to do is fuck...fuck...fuck...fuck...fuck!” The unbridled sexuality is startling, but when you think about it, the turbulence is a perfect underlining for sweet-sounding music about growing up and moving on.
The band then counters that song’s thinly-veiled hedonism with the role-reversing “Hang Up,” whose slow-dance 50s rock balladry finds Fisher imploring her lover to throw himself wholeheartedly into a new life. “This is where I hang up, start to pack my stuff up. I will come to you this time...I don’t want to have you on the side. I just want to have a normal time, have a normal life.” Is she embroiled in an affair? Is she coaxing him out of another relationship? Maybe, but it would seem heartless to resist her sincerity.
Make Your Mind has a welcomed, bouncing energy that picks the album up from its wispy, low-tempo tone halfway through. There’s a uniformity of pace, with most songs choosing a leisurely amble over an all-out rush, but the variance of tone and instrumentation saves the album from tedium, and adds up to an invigorating (and possibly final) effort from Arrah and the Ferns. - Alyssa Greenberg
