Hovvdy＜Translucent Blue Vinyl＞

For their fifth album, Hovvdy returned to the studio with Heavy Lifters Ben Littlejohn and True Loves Andrew Sarlo, who helped the duo retain their distinctively contemplative, intimate sound while broadening their slowcore-derived palette. Light synths, moaning pedal steel, drum machine beats, and even feedback adorn select arrangements on the varied Hovvdy, a double-length album that also covers wide-ranging thematic territory. It does so, however, in the manner of taking stock: in washes of memory and passing snapshots that, like the bands sound, never come into sharp focus. At the same time, their deliberate attempts during the recording process to capture a sense of immediacy through an emphasis on live takes enliven their style. They ease listeners into the nearly hour-long set with a 25-second piano intro (including sustain pedal and room noise) before transitioning into something more mechanical but just as wistful with the glitchy "Bubba," which is still rooted in piano. Like much of the album, it drops us into a scene, in this case a recounted conversation about people we maybe already know ("Bubba, you know I wanna fix it when youre down"). Another character song, "Jean," is a candidate for the albums liveliest, with a bouncy bassline, skittery drums, and syncopated acoustic guitar strumming that provide the backdrop to another childhood scene thats also set with lyrics like "Im at your exit/Five blocks to the house/You got a cousin says he can help me out." The down-home flavor of Hovvdy persists whether a song is injected with string voices and hip-hop beats, as on "Meant," or whether its the albums one true country entry, i.e. the closing waltz "A Little." It leaves listeners looking out a window at the rain with "a tune that reminds you of you," while pining for "love I ignored." Throughout the album, otherworldly touches -- loops, processed acoustic instruments, imperfect multi-tracked vocals, echo -- work effectively alongside sighed deliveries and fingerpaint-like lyrics that capture the emotions of otherwise fragmented memories. ~ Marcy Donelson