The indie world has been swinging between natural sounds and unnatural, from sweet melodies to trance tones. There was the alt-country & indietronica back-and-forth a year or two ago, and most recently it has been the alt-folk collective & chillwave – and lately it has seemed that the electronic end of the spectrum has had the upper hype hand. But perhaps bringing back some of that Luddite style will be Philadelphia’s Buried Beds, on their sophomore release, Tremble the Sails.
Formed around Eliza Jones & Brendon Beaver, Buried Beds mix their voices, as well as big & small instrumentation, on Tremble. There’s up-tempo and even a kind of grand uplift to pieces such as opener "Steady Hand" or "Your Modern Age", led by Beaver, while Jones’ vocals come to the fore in the smaller and sweeter "Mother", "Telegram", and "Home". Not that Beaver can’t do little – see the sad, stripped elegy closer "Just Hold Me" – or Jones bigger and brighter – see the cheery ditty-bop "Breadcrumb Trail". And sometimes they mix & match within a song, such as the sweet push-meets-bigger collective in "Ivory Towers", or the soaring folk-meets-arrhythmic dancehall to "Grandma’s Bow". Plus there’s "Heroes To Liars", a change-up from everything else, going funkier and darker.
The mix of styles means that there’s definitely something that you will like on Tremble the Sails, but also that you’ll feel other pieces are lesser ones. But before we have to deal with ‘post-dubstep’ (when was the original dubstep run?…), go back to the more natural side of things with Buried Beds.
MP3 Stream: "Steady Hand"
