Argon 40 - Fair Lawn

New York duo Argon 40 sound like something you'd find in a chemistry lab, and in a way, their music sounds very much like the product of a weird and wonderous experiment too. That said, Fair Lawn seems a particularly apt name for their album – neat, cultured and natural, the songs represent a precise achievement of distilled, clinical application to their art. It's a band knowing what they want, and getting it. The twosome - comprised of vocalist Heather Greene and Powerman 5000 member Adam Williams serve up an injection of chilly synthesizers and delicate, whispered vocals. 44.66 Days trembles organically, the instrumental expanses creeping into you like the blurry shapes in the corner of your eye. Meanwhile, the electro stomp of Stay and Bailey, Are You Dead are infused with a cold, robotic quality. It is with When the Words Don’t Come though that we see them delivering their strongest moments.

Here, pop sensibility comes to the fore with a dreamy chorus that harks back to 90s pop Queen Cathy Dennis. It’s half Bjork, half-wintery artistic soundscape. Later in the album come echoes of Portishead, Saint Etienne and even Dido on more acoustically-driven track like When I Fall. Greene’s vocals are soulful and intensely genuine; most importantly, they complement the blissful, chilled out melodies like a second skin.

You get the sense Fair Lawn, as an album, wants to present an open playing field, a blank canvas where music and listener meet in a collaborative effort to conjure up the optimum experience. And in the various floating levels of sonic wizardry on offer, this is largely achieved. Those in search of new experiences, new images of beauty will not leave disappointed with this album and as a collage of so many individual, pretty elements, Argon 40s debut effort excels at what it sets out to do.