Women

Women
Women
JagJaguwar

From Bret ‘The Hitman’ Hart’s hometown Calgary, Canada comes this frequently intriguing slice of obscurant pop-noise. Women co-opt freak folk rhythms, but their lo-fi style of presentation keeps everything distinctly claustrophobic. Given that the record was recorded in the “basement, outdoor culvert and crawl space” of fellow Calgarian Chad VanGaalen, it’s not surprising that the overriding mood is close and pressured.

It’s an oeuvre that is never adopted for its own sake, however, and the ominous closeness serves the set of songs exceedingly well. The guitar motif in Lawncare is hypnotic and almost reassuring against the harsh, unfamiliar, reverb-soaked background of insistent drums and hidden vocals that spans the whole album. Black Rice, conversely, lands somewhere between Liars and Jefferson Airplane, and the echoes that obscure its melodies simply add to their mysterious charm.

It’s not a stretch to say that Women synthesise the wildly differing elements of the contemporary sphere of indie-and-beyond. There are elements of things in play here that couldn’t but be the result of a vast record collection taking in everything from 1950s melodrama to the latest Deerhoof record. The breadth of styles that appear under the common theme of the claustrophobic make this an album that diffuses its charms slowly but surely over multiple spins.