Beauty In Death

Australian trio Chase Atlantic dive deeper into their dreamy electronic pop and SoundCloud R&B with 2021s woozy Beauty in Death. The album follows their equally atmospheric 2019 set Phases, and finds them having largely produced the record on their own in Los Angeles during the shutdown from the COVID-19 pandemic. As with Phases, Beauty in Death is a genre-bending album in which lead singer Mitchel Cave, singer/saxophonist Clinton Cave, and singer/guitarist Christian Anthony evoke a kind of post-modern combination of 90s R&B outfit Jodeci and the 1975. Theres a downtempo quality to the album, and tracks like Paranoid, Pleasexanny, and Empty find the group sinking into shimmering minor-key grooves marked by buzzy drill-bit percussion, glassy synths, vocoder-drenched melodies, and the occasional Middle Eastern flute flourish. Its a claustrophobically self-conscious vibe, straddling the emotional chasm between thoughtful introspection and #nof*&ksgiven debauchery. Tracks like Out the Roof showcase the bands inclination toward performative swagger as they revel in postapocalyptic bad-boy tropes like waxing poetic about their cars afterburner flamethrower. Similarly, on the buoyantly narcotic Slide, they grapple with their emotional angst over relationships by using drugs, or at least drug metaphors, singing Mental pressure; only text her when Im noddin off and I think the nitrous did damage, I cant feel my legs, all before launching into a magnificently gratuitous sax solo. Drugs and depression color much of Beauty in Death, and Chase Atlantic certainly arent the first band to write a love song thats really about getting high, as they do on Molly. That said, the groups commitment to their half-lidded loverman persona is oddly hypnotic, and Beauty in Death vibrates with their distinctive blend of old-school rock star hedonism and internet feels. ~ Matt Collar