专辑简介

Mystery and confusion are sexy, and Indian Jewelry get that. From the lost ruins of their vocals to the fuzz and feedback shot through their tightly produced tracks, the Houston psych band maintain a tranced-out, sexy, subterranean groove over the course of their fourth full-length. Lead single “Oceans” shows their ability to stuff a vast textural vocabulary into a tidy, capsular pop format: radiating waves of percussion, an elemental guitar line, and a spiked bass groove evoke the more sinister dance elements of Closer-era Joy Division. Singer Erika Thrasher’s delicate turn on “Excessive Moonlight” is like the sonic equivalent of black licorice — dark, idiosyncratic, with an insistent aftertaste. (They could almost be the bizarro Beach House.) These pop elements take abstract turns on “Diamond Things,” where repositioned drumbeats begin to resemble baile funk, and delay-damaged vocals and synths morph into a sort of spectral spray. For a band known more for untamed drones and out-there sonics, Totaled’s tempering of pop and experimentation is a welcome new feel.

Indian Jewelry emerged from the Houston underground noise scene in the early 2000s, and they’ve since had a two successful LP’s on We Are Free (which has also put out records by Ponytail and Yeasayer). Bandmates Erika Thrasher and Tex Kerschen draw from the rich effluvia of their outsider lives to construct Totaled, which is, they say, “the sum of hundreds of shows on the road and hundreds of hours under headphones.” They also grift from their Houston-based Prince cover band, Diamond+Pearls, for a funk element that’s delicious under the grime of their shamanistic lo-fi style. This album finds the current market to have drifted away from the drone-core trend that made for such a welcoming reception of 2008’s Free Gold. But if the musicians themselves are as immersed as their sound, that doesn’t matter.