After a few interim years detours, Malmö’s Death and Vanilla finally deliver their first songs-based LP since 2015

Having devoted energies to reissuing their early catalogue, soundtrack projects and occasional live performances, it’s taken some time for the Swedish trio of Marleen Nilsson, Magnus Bodin and Anders Hansson to bring out an official sequel to 2015’s inaugural appearance on Fire Records, To Where the Wild Things Are. At last though it’s here, in the shape of the luminous yet opaque Are You a Dreamer?

Whereas To Where the Wild Things Are sometimes strained to decide between leaning closer to the band’s beautifully imaginative hauntological beginnings or cleaving more heavily towards a wider-screen celestial art-pop approach, this official follow-up finds the trio seemingly more comfortable in their sonic skin. Retreating from the temptation to become a more straightforward Nordic dream-pop enterprise, Are You a Dreamer? instead finds increasing maturity sitting inside a well-balanced mix of mysticism and melodicism.

Opener “A Flaw in the Iris” sets the scene satisfyingly, with its multi-movements of sci-fi drones, programmed percussion, reverb-coated rippling and Nilsson’s drowsy vocals. The ensuing lengthier “Let’s Never Leave Here” spreads things out over six minutes with layers of pastoral flute sounds, dainty twinkling, fuzz-tone guitar and harpsichord-like keyboards, to imagine Saint Etienne blissfully lost in a Broadcast fog. Thereafter, the album glides between a variety of interlinked settings. Veering through the twangy space-rock of “Mercier”; the spacey quasi-dub grooves of “Eye Bath”; the pulsing spectral airiness of “The Hum”; the Stereolab-goes-shoegaze chugging and blurring of “Nothing Is Real”; the Cocteau Twins-meets-acid-folk fogginess of “Vespertine”; and the closing martial beats vs shadowy symphonics of “Wallpaper Pattern”.

At times there is some mild frustration, as there was on To Where the Wild Things Are, with Nilsson placing her alluring vocals so deep into the mix, when there is the capacity for them to glow more upfront without detracting from the surrounding sonic encodings. Overall though, Are You a Dreamer? fits soundly into Death and Vanilla’s body of work with its gathering of cloudy yet comforting high-craft enigmas.

firerecords.com

Adrian
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