When I covered Urban Myth Club's brilliant new album Open Up back in February, Surrender was the track that truly stood out for me. Every great record has one, that single moment that stands for everything that album is about - distilling it into a single instant of brilliance.
And so, for the duo, Surrender becomes their calling card; their resume of chilled out ambient bliss. And boy does it send out a good message. A lush ballad tinged with Eastern melodies and Bjork-esque vocals, string sections swell like swathes of grass blowing in the wind. Against this, the bass pulses slow and subdued in the background - indeed, Surrender stands as the epitome of a comedown track.
Airy, dream-like - this is so much the sound of a blazing sunset going down over an Ibiza horizon that you can almost taste it. These are the memories you'll keep after the very best of days. The chorus implores us to 'lose yourself in love', and if losing ourselves sounds as good as this, we certainly don't want to be found. Not yet anyway...
The result is that you're left marvelling, as with the whole Open Up album, at the sheer beauty on offer here. Surrender's power though is that taken on its own, removed from the hypnotic entity of the entire record, it still functions in every sense as a pop record.
In terms of what's in-vogue at the moment, there's a definite trend for all things Swedish. Just look at the mega success of Stieg Larsson's brilliant Millennium trilogy in both book and film formats. But here, we turn our attention to the music of that fair country in the form of singer-songwriter Charlotte Eriksson, also known as the GlassChild.
Even the name conjures up images of something delicately fragile, spectral and haunting. There's an ethereal beauty to Charlotte's vocals that speaks straight from the heart. She knows how to make every word count, how to tear the emotion from every syllable. Previously described as a punk version of Bjork and compared to Paramore singer Hayley Williams, her music is about as organic and natural as it comes.
Creepy Little Story is a real joy, one of those instantly pleasurable, chilled-out listens that whatever your current state of mind, sets you at complete ease with the world. Charlotte's voice is impressively strong, particularly in the ad-libs in the second half of the song.
Play Pretend presents a more attitude-laden side to the singer, kicking in with a satisfying crunch of electric guitar. There's a strong sense of Amy MacDonald to this one, Charlotte possessing that same untamed, windswept passion that finds it way into both her voice and music. These are songs of the air and the earth, as if the very spirit of nature has been distilled into these recordings.
Singer-songwriter has become something of a dirty word in recent years, but Charlotte brings it back to what it should be about; strong melodies and a constant emphasis on the talent contained in the tracks. In a competitive world, you don't have long to leave your mark, but Charlotte makes certain she does; Play Pretend in particular biting in, latching on to your senses.
Also marking Charlotte out from her contemporaries is the energy - there's no sitting on your laurels lazily strumming away on a guitar here. It's here that the Paramore comparisons hold the most weight; I'm Hidden So Well in particular infused with the spirit of punkiness that Hayley Williams has made a career out of channeling. Yet even in the hardest, most angsty moments of the music, songs like I'll Never Tell see Charlotte maintaining a constant sweetness to her vocals - imagine early Avril Lavigne back when she was delivering impassioned emo-pop ballads.
Speaking of her music, there are some really nice quotes from her too like "I think you have to decide what kind of person you wanna be. Do you wait for things to happen, or do you make them happen yourself? I believe in writing your own story." How poetic.
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.
