Flicker

In the decade-plus during which Death and Vanilla have been making records, theyve helped carry on a tradition of psychedelic music spearheaded by groups like Stereolab and Broadcast in the 1990s that fits snugly in the middle of the Venn diagram where eerie soundtrack music meets bright indie pop, moody indie rock, and chugging proto-prog as invented by the Germans in the early 70s. Their catalog has been a steady stream of near-perfect albums that captured a specific mood of tender melancholy undercut with brooding bleakness and the very occasional beam of sunlight breaking through. After the release of 2019s Are You a Dreamer?, the band -- along with large segments of the worlds population -- found themselves locked away with newfound time on their hands. They used it to explore new musical forms and undertake a gentle renovation of their long-established sound. As they began work on what became 2023s Flicker, the group assimilated influences as broad as the glimmer pop of the Cure, the shimmering soundscapes of Philip Glass, the booming sparseness of dub, and the jittery guitars of early Talking Heads. The trio do a magnificent job of blending new sounds and ideas into the mix, in the process whipping up their lightest, fluffiest album to date. The main difference here is that instead of each song being a self-contained little cloud of echoing sound, now its easier to pick out the instruments in the mix, especially the guitars, which take a more prominent role. Where in the past they were used almost solely as accents that bounced around in the background, now on a track like "Out for Magic" their forceful strum powers the songs. On "Find Another Illusion," the bands ultra-atmospheric take on a Fleetwood Mac-style West Coast ballad, the guitar whips up some distorted waves as the song crashes to a dramatic climax. As anyone who has followed the group for any amount of time knows, a "dramatic climax" isnt something theyve really done before. Neither is breezy, lighthearted echo pop like the super-catchy "Mercurys Rising," but they manage it here in winning style. These alterations to the formula are outliers, though; most of the album hews pretty closely to previous efforts, only with a different arranging and mixing style. The new approach works wonders, and tracks like the dubby "Fearless" and "Looking Glass" -- a song so prettily gloomy that Robert Smith sure wishes he had written it -- sound intrinsically like Death and Vanilla, but with a new set of ears leading the way. Flicker marks a subtle, meaningful shift for the band; its a rare case where a group is able to successfully onboard a new set of sonic touchpoints without ruining the greatness that was already there. ~ Tim Sendra