I Break Horses: Chiaroscuro

The second record by Maria Lindén and Fredrik Balck (after 2011's Hearts) inhabits a sweeping, elegant, sensuous world that's dizzying in its poetic vision. You Burn's percussive heartbeats are well married to Lindén's hypnotic vocal and a piano melody that washes everything with a kind of glow that's present on every subsequent song. The pace changes at different turns: frenetic on Faith, loping on Ascension, heavier on the more menacing Berceuse. The touchstones of shoegaze, electronica, classical and pop are all wrung out and hazily interrogated. Lindén and Balck reach down deep into rather fantastical pockets, as if commissioned to write an alt.soundtrack to Labyrinth. The atmosphere is unequivocally romantic, thriving on duality and contrast.Denial's uptempo direction is tempered by darker lyrics about the defeat in compromise and the immanency of death. Heart to Know, with its prayerful tone, is a perfect closer for this emotional, beautiful record.
Download: You Burn, Faith, Denial