Drawing on 1980s indie favourites such as Cocteau Twins and The Durutti Column, while also nodding to contemporary acts like London Grammar and The XX, musician-producer Emily Underhill (aka TUSKS) follows her well-received 2014 EP Ink with a debut album of atmospheric, widescreen, indie-electro. Dream pop is too warm a description for something this chilly-sounding, but whatever term you choose there's a sonic haze hanging over Dissolve which gives it the feel of something pleasingly other-worldly. It's pleasingly slow-moving too: in keeping with the overall temperature, the songs move at a glacial pace.
Underhill's vocals are often placed well back in the mix, becoming just another layer of ambient sound on songs like My Love, Toronto and James Blake-y opener For You. When foregrounded, as on Ivy and False, she reveals herself to be a songwriter of talent, and with its brooding, crystalline beauty the title track could be one of those earworm songs the makers of Scandinavian crime dramas are so good at finding for their credit sequences. Maybe it will be soon. Of course that's a double-edged compliment: in a marketplace crowded with such ethereal pop, ubiquity is a danger. But Underhill does enough here to distinguish herself, and the million plus Spotify streams she received for Ink hint at a ready audience for her work.
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