Anastasia Coope – DOT EP

Description

Ships late October

Driven by her vulnerable, nuanced voice, Anastasia Coope’s ‘DOT’, the first release on the Bonzo label, is a quietly psychedelic suite of slow-burning avant-folk experiments that’s braced by her charming, idiosyncratic production. The songs capture Coope’s new international reality in the wake of the release of her acclaimed debut album ‘Darning Woman’ last year, mimicking the momentum and relative isolation of various mechanical modes of transport (cars, planes, boats) and the watchful contemplation as she shuttles from place to place. On ‘Stars for People’, woozy synthesizer oscillations set the pace for layered words that coalesce into a euphoric chorus, never overpowering the gentle, lulling rhythm. And on ‘Piano Stacks’, Coope ferries towards downtown New York City, welding distorted organ vamps and Silver Apples-style drums to noisy shortwave atmospheres that swirl and flex around her dubbed-out vocals.

  “I have a simple answer, inside a simple alcove,” she deadpans on the anachronistic lead single ‘Pink Lady Opera’. “I hope that when I answer, you will leave and come home.” Plasticky staccato strings joyride through swirling vocal loops and melodica blasts, and Coope creates a sound that hovers confidently between airy ambience and Autumnal, lo-fi psych pop. There’s a blurriness to her material that sets it behind a layer or two of cracked frosted glass, as if onlookers can only watch as the songs play out in kaleidoscopic widescreen. Vertiginous, bone-dry breaks propel ‘Cradle Sun’, and Coope uses the opportunity to generate ghosted vocal dissociations that eventually crystallize into corporeal words. So the short outro ‘Perfect Doe’ comes as no surprise, carrying her whispers towards the inevitable silence with scraped, hoarse strings and unstable rhythmic chugs.