Babydoll＜限定盤/Cream Vinyl＞

On 2021s Pacific Kiss, David West boiled down the sound of Rat Columns to the bright and sunny basics of power pop: sharp hooks, brief run times, incisive guitar work, breathless vocals. On 2023s Babydoll, he dismantles that construction and rearranges it into a gloomy, diffuse smear of jarring sounds, drawn-out songs, and messy emotions. The result is not for the faint of heart or those looking for the arrow-straight pop thrills of the previous album. The first half of it is made up of slowly unspooling nightmare pop like "Cerulean Blue," with its downstroke grunge, twanging lead guitar, and blissful melody, or the crushingly metallic "Heavenly Assault" sounding like a queasy, uneasy take on shoegaze where the melodies are subaquatic and the songs stretched into elongated stains of melancholy. About halfway through, they switch gears into even less predictable territory that moves even further away from the previous albums lightness. Here, there are sparse, acoustic-adjacent ballads like "December" and the title track that make for the ideal soundtrack for a quick burst of tears into ones sleeve, along with "Jane, I Live for You," which is an uneasy cross between a synth pop nightmare and a desperate post-punk love song, and the almost industrial clatter and grind of "Bees Make Honey." Nothing on either side of the album comes remotely close to the breeziness the band usually is willing and able to tap into; even the hookiest track, "Virtual Sweden," stretches out past the six-minute mark and has absolutely no chill. In fact, the entire album is tense, unsettling, and located on the deep, dark side of blue. That underlying sense that nothing is even close to being okay is the main connecting thread that holds the album together, even as the songs dig a deeper hole, leaving the listener shattered and wondering where the happy-go-lucky group who made Pacific Kiss went. They are still there though, just buried in sadness and blurred almost beyond recognition, and if listeners are willing to follow the band on their bummer trip and replace sweetness for sour, the payoff is just as deeply satisfying as before. ~ Tim Sendra