Concept Album

REVIEW: Hannah Epperson - UPSWEEP

Laura Kerry

Hannah Epperson’s UPSWEEP traces different stories, spaces, and visions as they intersect in a wholly unique two-part album. The artist, who grew up in Vancouver and studied Human Geography, a field that explores humanity’s impact on the natural landscape, creates her own immersive sound environment comprised of a dreamy mixture of folk music, synth-pop, baroque-pop, and jazz, among other components. Epperson borrows her album’s title from the name of sounds that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) collected over time but could never identify, a fitting image for a work whose threads seem to emerge from nowhere and flow, hauntingly and mesmerizingly, as it submerges the listener.

A skilled storyteller now at home in Brooklyn, Epperson follows another main strand through the album: two characters, Amelia and Iris, from an in-progress screenplay by the artist. With each character dwelling in parentheses next to the same five song titles, UPSWEEP reads more like an EP repeated in two related but very different styles.

The first time through, the Amelia half, reflects Epperson’s collaboration with producer Ajay Bhattacharyya. The album opens on violin plucking and contains accents of it, her main instrument, throughout, but the first part is largely driven by electronic and pop elements. “Circles,” the second track, gains its sultry power from the deep pulse of trip-hop bass (“I’m tired of healing / I wanna remember what we did in the back seat”); through the intertwining of jazzy melodies and percussion, auto-tuned voices sing the sparse chorus in “Strong Thread”; waves of dance-synth arpeggios define the floating sensation of “Story”; and sparkling harp and mallet sounds glitter across the left and right channels in the R&B- and synth pop–infused “Iodine.”

Though Epperson reimagines the same songs, the second half of UPSWEEP sounds foreign. In it, her violin—plucked, strummed, bowed—takes center stage, and her voice, often almost unrecognizable, sets the tone in a half-whisper. The sultry “Circles” becomes a slow reflective tune that peaks into an aching moment when Epperson’s voice breaks; “Story” floats again, this time in violin reverie; and “Iodine” rests on otherworldly plucking underneath vocals that alternate between quiet whisper and pop confidence. The lyrics and the poetic stories they describe emerge more in this half, which leans towards the folkier side of art or baroque pop.

The transition between these different genres and characters on the album halves is a real rift that relies, in some ways, on outside concepts to bridge it. But beneath the rich conceptual dimensions of Epperson’s work, the artist composes music so smooth and absorbing that you may not even skip a beat in the switch from Amelia to Iris. It’s harder to immerse with starkness than it is with noise, and on UPSWEEP, Epperson manages to do so twice, in two distinct and beautiful voices.

REVIEW: Yoni & Geti - Testarossa

Raquel Dalarossa

Yoni Wolf and David Cohn go by several different names. Over the course of a couple decades, they’ve both dipped their toes into a number of underground hip-hop projects that range from the co-founding of an indie label (Wolf’s Anticon Records) to collaborations with indie rock stalwarts (Cohn’s Sisyphus project, with Sufjan Stevens and Son Lux). Individually, they’re best known under their rap stage names—Wolf’s Why? and Cohn’s Serengeti—but their long resumes help track the wide breadth of experience they’re each bringing to the full-length concept album Testarossa, their first release as Yoni & Geti.

Wolf and Cohn have collaborated in the past, particularly on 2011’s Family & Friends (a Serengeti album with Wolf on production), but this official partnership pays off splendidly. Testarossa is said to have come from a script written by the two rappers while on a joint tour, and it chronicles the fictional lives of Davy and Madeline, a couple whose marriage disintegrates over the span of 14 tracks. We jump in and out of perspectives, listening as Davy goes on tour with his band and Maddy stays behind with their children. The tale itself is not particularly remarkable, but the way in which it’s unfolded by our two storytellers certainly is.

The narrative plays out through details, moments intricately woven together and plucked apart again. On “Lunchline,” a song that hones in on the mundane shuffle of life, Geti puts on a mindless tone as Davy, highlighting brief, everyday snapshots like “Get the lo mein, take the F train.” Later on, the track “Lucky Town” puts us in Maddy’s shoes, with Wolf playing the part in his husky voice, ruefully remarking, “Sitting at the dinner table / I saw your face on the cable.” And on “I, Testarossa,” we’re thrown back into Davy’s hurried stream of thoughts, constantly interrupted by the image of his daughter’s newly-cut bangs (“Thinking ‘bout my daughter, how they cutting her locks,” and later, “This chick got bangs like my daughter”).

Stylistic touches place context around the dense rhymes. Musically, the record pulls both from catchy indie rock and avant-garde hip-hop, but it feels less like a juxtaposition and more like a true meeting of minds. Despite hops and skips from one rhythm to the next, the album plays with a distinct dynamic flow. It feels alive, like a theatrical play with backgrounds changing between scenes—suburban, pale-faced houses glide offstage as snow-capped mountains are pulled in. Where “Madeline” is a stomping, lush pop gem led by Wolf’s delicate singing, “Down” is a bare-bones, Brazilian-tinted party that gets spliced midway by a tender string section, like a brief moment of clarity and deep thought in the middle of a drunken night out.

It all comes together gorgeously. The record requires some investment of time and attention, but it’ll reward you in return. With tight rhyming, engaging melodies, and piercingly vivid feeling, Testarossa proves to be a thoroughly great listen, and an enthralling reflection on life.