VIDEO PREMIERE: Teton - Dream Come True

Raquel Dalarossa

Teton list an interesting combination of artists and genres as their influences: from medieval music to ‘80s art pop, and from chamber to prog. It doesn’t make much sense on paper, but hearing is believing, and the trio deftly manage to weave those disparate references together to create something very much their own.

The Portland-based band is made up of Elizabeth Lovell on synths and vocals, Sam Klickner on percussion, and Jef Hill on bass. We covered their debut single last year, from their six-song collection Candy Spelling. Now, they’re back with their first video, an encapsulation of their whole aura.

“Dream Come True” has a hypnotic and haunting quality; the song opens with a folksy melody played on recorder, like something you’d hear around a campfire. The visuals are a perfect match for the eerie track, drawing heavily from the vibe of the Pacific Northwest. The camera follows Lowell as she walks, determinedly, down a mountainside, while the sun dips below the horizon. Soon enough, it’s entirely dark out, but something continues to draw her forward. It’s perfectly perplexing and bewitching.

REVIEW: Aaron Roche - HaHa HuHu

Laura Kerry

Aaron Roche has some impressive notches on his musical belt. He has played guitar alongside a varied group of musicians (R. Stevie Moore, Lower Dens, Sufjan Stevens and Anohni), consequently developing a talent for diversity and range in his multi-instrumental style. That range is spotlighted in Roche’s own music.

Though his foundation is in acoustic, folky guitar parts, the Brooklyn-based artist's new album, HaHa HuHu, sees him following his musical whims through ghostly harmonies, glitchy electronics, and beautiful melodies. The title holds clues to Roche’s conflicting yet functionally compatible impulses: Haha and Huhu are Hindu music deities, whom Roche seems to pay tribute to through non-Western musical touches (particularly in the female singer’s part on “Supreme Monument”), as well as the album’s overall sense of mysticism and spirituality (the vocals-driven “Like Why I” resembles an old Christian spiritual, while “K Is Manic” sounds like a church choir).

On the other hand, HaHa HuHu is the laugh of someone who might be slightly unhinged—a persona that's also reflected in the album. Starting with the strong opener, “Bang,” Roche imbues his music with a sense of anxiety and imbalance. The song begins with soft and melancholic folk, pairing a quick, picked pattern on acoustic guitar with a descending melody sung in an expressive voice; but soon, Roche enacts a kind of breakdown, repeating the same syllable over and over again as effects begin to manipulate it. Electronic voices then enter, droning, screeching, and ringing in dense, jittery patterns as the pretty vocals sing “I hear my head bang.” By marrying glitchy sounds with a gorgeous folk song, Roche plays with feelings of inner conflict to make something magnetically off-kilter.

This kind of conflict emerges throughout HaHa HuHu. It’s in the devastating panic of “The Terror,” a more straightforward folk composition in which Roche sings passionately about his own death improving the world (“If the cancer gets me in the end / I know it’s better for the world"), police violence (“[Eric Garner’s] fingers fluttered rolling papers”), and suicide (“I form a plan to kill myself”). When he obsessively repeats a line at the end—“I cannot bear to make something and destroy it”—it sounds like a glitch without the electronic intervention. “K is Manic” achieves a similar visceral gut-punch, this time through effects: Over the echoing angelic choir, Roche plays a looping, disrupting sample of what sounds like a man in extreme distress.

Besides the dual anguish and spirituality, one overarching takeaway from HaHa HuHu is the confidence and attentiveness with which Roche approaches his music. A thoughtful and deliberate artist in all of his many musical modes, he takes as much care with his heart wrenching folk guitar compositions as he does with rounded, complex electronic voices and evocative strings (“One Thing at a Time,” “Wooden Knife”). Only a few times—in the title track, for example—does the abundance of ideas outweigh clarity. For the most part, all of the conflicts between voices and styles only add to the album’s intrigue and strength. HaHa HuHu is as captivating as it is beautiful and strange.

REVIEW: Common Holly - Playing House

Laura Kerry

One of the hardest things to do in the face of heartache or grief is to act generously. Though Common Holly’s debut LP, Playing House, came together after the end of a long relationship—according to Brigitte Naggar, the Montreal songwriter behind the band—the album is filled with indie-folk tunes that show as much sweetness as they do sadness and reflection. Somewhat surprisingly, its dominant themes are warmth and generosity.

Instead of relying on the inward-facing meditation that dominates many breakup albums, Common Holly often reaches out beyond the herself, offering support for another. In “Nothing,” over soft electric guitar, light keys, and pretty harmonies, Naggar sings, “I'd say I hope that for your sake / The world is done punishing you.” The next song, “Devil’s Doubt,” shares a similar sentiment, urging amid a wash of cello, “Stop all that sitting by the window / Don't you forget about the daylight.” In the baroque melody in “Lullaby,” she again coaxes the person she addresses out, singing, “Come out, come out wherever you are / My friend it’s safe.” Rock and folk have produced a lot of breakup albums, but not many exhibit such empathy for the person left behind (if we can presume that’s who she addresses).

Not all of Playing House is sweet, though. Throughout the album, Common Holly includes a fair share of harder-edged and offbeat moments for balance. Violins screech quietly in “The Desert” behind a satisfying dream-pop build; “In My Heart” has accents of grinding, soaring electric guitar; “If After All” features a big, aggressive swell of rock instruments with vocals to match; and the rhythm in “Lullaby” is at times delightfully elusive. Mostly gentle and pretty, Naggar’s vocals also transform to reflect some of the edge that occasionally emerges in the lyrics. When the artist does turn her reflections on herself, they are metaphors of dangerous things: “I’m the wild coyote,” she sings in “The Desert,” and “I know I was the rose / But now I feel like I’m the thorn” in “The Rose.”

For the most part, though, the vocals are soft and dreamy, more mournful and tender than biting. And in an album with surprising touches of pop, the vocals are also at times invitingly bright. In the final song, “New Bed,” for example, over light acoustic guitar and rain sound effects, Naggar sings breathily but cheerfully, “There it is still raining / Here it’s dry”—a line that suggests despite everything, it will be okay. “A steady beating in my heart, it keeps me ready,” she sings; she can face the dark on her own, with the strength of self-assurance. Perhaps more than a breakup album, Playing House is a coming-of-age album. While the title and children pictured on the cover suggest that tough times can make you feel like a kid pretending to be an adult, Common Holly’s music is graceful, subtle, and fully grown up.

REVIEW: Thelma - Thelma

Kelly Kirwan

Natasha Jacobs' soprano has a wavering strut. Her each an every word reverberates in a slightly warbled delivery, her croon reaching the highest of octaves with an airy trill before billowing into a tour de force pitch. It's stirring, a riddle we continually try to unravel without ever reaching a neatly written answer. Straight lines and common practice are not in her, nor her bandmates', repertoire. The folk four-piece, Thelma, have emerged with a stunning seven-track, self-titled debut, released by indie label Tiny Engines.

Their melodies drift between slightly somber moods, pensive interludes and more robust reveling, and Jacobs' unique vocals feel nearly spectral in their ephemeral style. But make no mistake—the allure of Thelma's tracks and Jacobs' trembling voice is not a sign of daintiness, something we so often prescribe as a synonym for beauty. Thelma has nerves of steel, their songs reinforced with the grit of heels dug into dirt. Take Jacobs' musical genesis, for example: "Thelma’s origin seems to suggest that Natasha Jacobs’ musical abilities sprouted from the singer-songwriter almost spontaneously, whilst she convalesced after a life-changing fall from a ladder.” It was after this event that Jacobs started to write music, removing any lingering sense of the group’s fragility.

Perhaps this is why Thelma’s melodies, at times, take on a raucous touch. Nothing over the top—just a hint of dissonance, the tease of chaos. For instance, in the meandering sendoff of their track “Peach,” with its foreboding tone and interspersed clashing, or “Haha,” which layers the vocals over one another, a Russian nesting doll of lilted coos and slight distortion. Then there’s “White Couches,” in which the guitars and drums build like encroaching storm clouds, petering off and surging again, as Jacobs repeats, “I can sit on your white couches tonight,” a statement that says much more than what’s obvious on the surface. It’s a metaphor contrasting her “messy” presence with immaculate decor, and she’s not shying away from claiming her right to be there.

And we can't forget “If You Let it,” which opens the album and homes in on several of its motifs: the world we create within our minds, the restrictions we place on ourselves, and the pedestals we erect that don’t quite translate into reality. “From a moonbeam I can’t hear / You or feel the limits you put / On yourself and those around you,” Jacobs sings, before diving into the revolving chorus of “If you let it.” Perhaps she means letting go, or unapologetically stepping into your own identity—I suppose the answer is different for all of us listening. But as with everything else on this album, we’re left rapt as we attempt to unravel it.