Bipolar Explorer - Last Lights
Released: June 21 With their latest album, Bipolar Explorer solidifies their place as veritable masters of the introspective and shoegaze-y. Sylvia Solanas’s deep and whisper-y vocals bring a sense of the concrete to the otherwise ethereal textures brought forth by both her and multi-instrumentalist Michael Serafin-Wells. Even with what we have come to expect from the band, there are still some surprising moments in which the shoegaze vibes fade and we are thrust into a more abstract and ghostly plane, like on “Secret Angels Beneath the West Side Highway Overpass” which feels much like walking through an abandoned corridor of similar aesthetics. The persistent squeak of what sounds like an errant footstep on a hard floor and a general aura of environmental noise without form makes for something haunting and simultaneously peaceful. But for every strange dark and daunting moment on the album, there are those beautiful and washed out guitar and vocal driven tracks such as “Tur...
