Katie Kim - Salt

Dream pop's ethereal nature gives each artist who dabbles in it a unique presence. Such is the case in Katie Kim's third record Salt.

Katie Kim's no stranger to creating folky, ominous atmosphere, and it shows throughout Salt. Kicking off the record is 'Ghosts,' a sparkly and expansive track with wallowing and sparkly synths fillings its cavernous composition. It's creepy as the title should suggest, the echoing drums moving drearily and slowly as if the song itself was a ghost taking one slow, gentle step at a time. This isn't a poltergeist; it's a lost soul looking for another chance. This same dreariness is a large part of the latter half of the record, with tracks like 'I Make Sparks' and 'Life Or Living' functioning off the slow moving swells.

What the album really does well, as is to be expected from Kim, is build up some emotion. The song 'Day Is Coming' is perhaps the least optimistic track on the record, the guitar somberly playing under Kim's sweet but defeated melodies. Defeated, hopeless vocals find a powerful home in dream pop,  and 'Day Is Coming' takes advantage of that. Pretty, haunting strings support Kim's poetic lyrics, that eerily chant: "I'm bleeding but I'm healthy, it's aesthetic... I am carrying a torch but with the right eye, I cannot see / Take me to the answers, I'm the one who's listening / I'm the only one that knows about your scars." The track finds astute beauty in a couple's emptiness, filling its melancholy space with dramatic, almost cinematic instruments.

If this album could capture that raw emptiness that 'Day Is Coming' had in more places, it would've been phenomenal. The sad part is that it falls short of reaching a particular height of emotion. Dream pop is not meant to be expansive and invigorating; it's a genre that thrives from emptiness. Katie Kim channels a lot of sound and vast atmosphere in this record. Sometimes it works, and other times it doesn't. There are songs like 'Beautiful Human' that channel emptiness and atmosphere wonderfully, whereas tracks like the ending song 'Wide Hand' feel empty without anything to show for it.

Katie Kim has the ability to make something of hopelessness, but at times it feels like it loses direction of that. Salt wallows in own pessimism, hopelessly trying to find something to cling on to. That's the essence of dream pop, but unfortunately there is a lack of balance in the instrumentals to really channel that. The keys are there; perhaps the next album will pick them up.

Favorite Tracks: Day Is Coming, Beautiful Human

Least Favorite Track: Wide Hand

Rating: 78 / 100

Gem Club - Breakers

It's sometimes the emptiest music that has the most heart. It's easiest to relate to emptiness - there's nothing really to interpret; it's just empty. It's up to you to add emotion into it.

The debut record from Gem Club, entitled Breakers, is the perfect example of that phenomenon. The 2011 record's sound consists of the dreamiest pianos and sweet strings that back Christopher Barnes' sweet indie voice. It's a very gentle record, introspective all the while laying down some heavy meanings.

The first impression you get of the record is the brilliant 'Twins,' a tragic admittance of Barnes' twin who died at childbirth. The lyrics wistfully croon "The wind shook the kiss from your mouth / Before I could learn whose twin I was" in a pretty and gentle voice. Beautiful piano chords simply but powerfully ring out as the gentle violin sings quietly above the track. This song, like many others, is written with brevity but with much thought. It's full of amazing metaphors for death that resonate with meaning beyond the purpose of the song itself.

The best part of the record is undoubtedly its lyrics. The track 'Lands' faces utter hopelessness, Barnes and Kristen Drymala singing together in a tragic duet as the slow drumbeat emulates a heartbeat. The pianos ring gently and darkly as pretty synths and atmosphere build up. The lyrics tell the haunting tale of someone who has lost the most important part of their life: their lover. The narrator faces severe depression, and the song seems to be about the choice to end it all. Barnes quietly cries "I feel you are the one whose moving beneath me  / Are there riders coming through the dark," as the everlasting presence of the narrator's lover continues to haunt them. After clinging to it for so long, the presence leaves, the lines "There is no more communication / I'm building lovers in our bed," revealing their reluctance to let go. The song ends quietly and as darkly as it persisted, the piano growing with the slightest intensity before fading out with the hauntingly memorialization of the narrator's final moments: "I feel no real danger / I'm filled with desire / The back of my head split wide open / And I saw the look of lands changing / Are there riders coming through the dark."

'Red Arrow' follows it through is just as powerfully, a slightly more convicted track detailing the release from life. Love was everything to the narrator of this track, and it was tragically taken away from them. The standout of this track is moreso the incredibly simple and powerful instrumental and the backing vocals that hauntingly resonate at the back of the track. The album slowly evolves into one that seeks hope to fill it's empty void. 'I Heard The Party' is the narrator's attempt at finding purpose, but the burden of his emptiness is too great; he cannot find happiness even when in the face of it. There's reminiscing in 'Tanagers' as Barnes sings in a very introspective manner. There's something about the symbolism of horses that Barnes can't seem to escape, yet it provides strong emotions to the tracks it is mentioned in. 'Lands' speaks of "riders" as they come to take him away to the next life, the metaphor providing a strong image of deliverance. In 'Tanagers,' the horses act as a message for hope; the memory of them gave the narrator something to want to return to. The horses gave them emotion.

The album ends on powerful notes. '252' is a song that has too strong interpretations: the narrator is in deep love, or the narrator's lover is diagnosed with cancer. In the cancer timeline, the two involved struggle with how the gravity of the situation effects their lives. The constant hospital visits paired with the heartbreaking thought that every meeting could be the last, Barnes blaming "the cells of this body [that] have all lost their memory... This terrible anatomy / Will surely get the best of me" for his sorrows. This meaning coincides with the story of love (how being deeply in love can effectively damage your own life through obsession), both meanings brought together by the lines "Confused by each other / To work out of order / And I hate that they require / The need to be together... Maybe they'd grow in someone else / Watch as they grow in someone else." The album ends beautifully and calmly in 'In Wavelengths' as if to submit to all of the pain and suffering that the narrator has been the victim of. It's one final defeat, and it feels like it. In the end, they come to terms with reality and let it take them, whether for better or for worse.

Breakers is like what Sufjan Stevens would sound like if his music was based solely around ethereal pianos and tragic orchestras. Every track on this record is it's own 'Fourth Of July,' the strength of each song expressed through its meaning. It's a depressive, challenging, and empty record, but in its emptiness it finds power. It draws emotion from the rawest places. Gem Club's debut is one of the strongest out there, but it's incredible how it makes so much out of nothing. Tragedy can be channeled into the most beautiful art.

Favorite Tracks: Lands, Red Arrow, Black Ships, 252

Least Favorite Tracks: Breakers, Tanagers

Rating: 94 / 100

Psychic Twin - Strange Diary

Everyone loves channeling the 80s in electronica nowadays. There's something in that warm nostalgia that really brings something out of its listener. However, there's a fine line between a sweet nostalgia and just boring and unoriginal. That's the trap Psychic Twin falls into on their debut record, which beams with hope but doesn't amount to much.

The duo currently consists of vocalist Erin Fein and drummer Rosana Caban, a strong pair, but this lineup wasn't achieved without lots of error. Their debut Strange Diary was a long work in progress - written when Fein was in the process of divorce. Written on the group's Facebook page is an introduction of sorts to the record, which states: "In dreams, we rarely know what we are running from or toward. We only know we must keep running, continue searching... Strange Diary lives in that state of surreal urgency. What’s in front of us or behind us can’t be described, but we are sure in our bones that what we are searching for exists just a few steps away. "

Fein reprimands - and sometimes begs for - an anonymous "you" in plenty of songs, and while it's not certain who it's about, it seems to point in the direction of a lover whom she was with or desires to find. This is most evident in 'Strangers', a song released in 2013 as a single that has found its home at the beginning of the record.

There's a surreal urgency, as they put it, in this album, and it's clearest in that song, with the spiraling synth arpeggios providing a pulsating flow. It's lyrics croon to the mysterious "you", the chorus explaining, "I know the way that I lie awake for hours / And you don't even know the night is all I have / But even when we build these mighty towers / I know that we can take them down again." "You" is the force that's keeping her up.

The sad thing is, this album essentially lives off of that sentiment. There's not much to discuss as far as song meanings go - it's all just the standard songs of love and desire, without any memorable lines or melodies to justify them. The middle chunk of the record is boring as a whole, from the wobbly synths of 'Stop In Time' to the lackluster 'Hopeless', there really isn't much to stick around for. It's a collection of dream pop songs with occasional sweet synths but no punches.

Psychic Twin seems to have been driven too much by their heartbreak to be focussed on anything else but that. Breakup albums are always good, but those have some emotional punch to them. Strange Diary is very monotonous and overall just boring. There's not much more to say about it. If you like minimal dream pop above love songs with lo-fi vocals, this'll be a great album for you. If you're looking for something unique and memorable, you may want to keep searching.

Favorite Track: Strangers

Least Favorite Tracks: Unlock Yr Heart, Stop In Time Hopeless, Stop In Time

Rating: 57 / 100