Hugs

Boston based duo offers up a collection of provoking, low-fi avant-freaky-folk and noise tracks. The duo seem to share vocal duties, with quite a bit of range between them, and effectively pulls off the sequencing too as this collage-like album jumps from monstrous noise overkill to lovelorn ballads with equal parts melodic finger-picked guitar and electronic twiddling. Second half of the album sounds more psychedelic, but really the album eludes a mood. Beautifully warped! FCC: #8.

1. Brief intro music – 21 secs
2. Fastly strummed guitars, raga quality, raw vocals almost Xiu Xiu (at his most straightforward) like.
3. Vocables over buzzing. Are those kazoos?
*4. Harmonized, semi-audible singing over various industrial noises and static.
5. Noise track, construction site sounds.
*6. Pretty, breezy acoustic guitars with soft, electronic textures.
*7. Most straightforward offering but still sounds like a novel rendition of a baroque ballad.
8. Rowdy, noisy, instrumentation, spoken-word, oratorical quality. FCC: Fucked up [0:01]
9. Lightning Bolt emulations, lacks ferociousness and thus effectiveness
10. Airy, nature sounds with bits of barely audible vox that come in sounding like out of tune trumpet.
*11. Psyched out quality; overlapping deemphasized vocals have a sort of Ariel Pink quality.
12. Muffled, deep vocals
13. Surprisingly, heavily affected accents are not annoying here.
14. Brief, instrumental track alludes to sounds rising from an abyss
15. Pretty sustained harmonies, builds momentum slowly
16. Long track, 14 minutes of sustained creepiness, organ and drums.