REVIEW: Cuddle Magic - Ashes/Axis

Laura Kerry

Cuddle Magic has been around for a decade, which is a long time by the standards of many pop groups. And since their formation in Boston, the six-piece band has used that time wisely; they've released three polished full-lengths, worked on the side with musicians ranging from Beyoncé to Anais Mitchell, and earned a reputation for their “high-concept chamber-pop” (according to The New Yorker). Now in New York, the band has released a new LP that shows off what they’ve learned together.

On Ashes/Axis, Cuddle Magic returns with a more straightforward sound, though they do manage to maintain much of the complexity and experimentalism that has defined them. The sum of each song is pop, but look beneath the surface, and you begin to unravel the varied and surprising parts that precisely fit together to create the end result. Touches of folk intertwine with electronic dance beats (“Spinning” and “Round and Round,” to name just a couple); whispered, baroque female vocals sit on top of urgent electronic beats (“Voicemail”); and instruments and vocals overlap, intertwine, and dance around each other in unpredictable ways (“Trojan Horse,” “Kiss You”). For the most part, Ashes/Axis is meticulous, burying the inner workings of its sound under danceable beats and folk-infused pop. Every so often, though, they reveal a welcome spark from the inside. When the end of “The First Hippie on the Moon, Pt. I” breaks down for example, it feels like the threads of a tapestry unraveling to show more vividly colored threads than you could have imagined.

Pushing against the hidden complexities—another tension that adds to the fullness of the album—are lyrics that are surprisingly direct. Though Cuddle Magic trades songwriting duties among three members, most songs exhibit the same kind of sincerity. Over the intricate instrumental arrangement in “Kiss You,” for example, the male vocalist sings lines such as, “I don’t want to kiss you yet,” “I still want to know where it all will go,” and “While I think it through / Maybe you’ll kiss me.” In the last song, which contains touches of Sufjan Stevens in vocals and tone, they sing, “Round and round we still keep moving still round and round” lightly over bells and guitar, showing bright-eyed optimism in message, even as their sound is fully developed.

Yet, even that last song, with straightforward lines like, “There is something you can’t see / Connecting you to me,” isn’t quite as it seems. As the listener settles into the repeating guitar riff and slow, marching rhythm that drives the song, a more dancey beat comes in and propels the slow build to the end. And then you start to notice that the chorus, which lends the title to the song, is a clever meta-narrative, enacting the circular action it describes by repeating on “still, round and round.” Until the very end of Ashes/Axis, Cuddle Magic keeps pulling carefully crafted tricks from up their sleeves.