Towards The Shadow

Husband-wife duo from DC via Chicago: Fantastic analog synths with the woman singing and playing real drums (like crazy). A pure distillation of all the best things about bands like Neu, Stereolab, Trans Am. Synths and offtime mechanical beats lend a sci-fi element, especially when she delivers a monotone “robotic” singing style, but “prog” or “mathrock” also come to mind with the lack of straight 4/4 anything here. One of my favorite contemporary bands (I was lucky enough to catch them while on a weekend trip to Chicago 3 years ago), they do all of this live, no studio tricks here. Start with track 3, move to others for slightly more cerebral experience.

1)* (3:30) lovely analog blippy offtime countered with mathy drums, vocs delivered monotone with dissonant simple “melodies” 2)* (2:05) dark droney synth under light blips, a driving pounding drumbeat fades in and this becomes intense 3)** (5:17) this one is more accessible, almost indie pop, has urgency but approachability, melodic sense 4) (4:33) just a cool offtime “jam” 5)* (6:48) a strange divergence: simple tones, percussive, with a spoken word essay/dialog regarding societal structure, domination, why your job is fucking killing your humanity, delivered monotone, heady stuff 6) (5:09) very percussive beats, evolves to a pleasant one with nice vocals 7) (6:08) piano, smacks of avante jazz, upbeat fun, mixes it all up, later the woman contributes another spoken word thing 8) (5:58) slow phrased, trippy