The digital vertigo revs up instantly and infrequently lets up on “No Rules Sandy,” the fourth studio album by Sylvan Esso. “How can I be moved when everything is moving,” Amelia Meath calmly muses within the opening monitor, “Moving,” over a hissing, scurrying beat, octave-swooping blips and stereo-panning whooshes that maintain issues spinning. It’s a whirlwind begin to an album that celebrates renewed, unconstrained movement: lighthearted on the floor, purposeful at its core.
Sylvan Esso — the duo of Meath and her husband, Nick Sanborn — has created its personal area of interest of electro-pop: clear but intricate, ethereal however critical, fond of pop buildings but desirous to bend them. The duo skillfully deploys the {hardware} and software program of digital dance music, even because it eludes genres and warps normal patterns. The expertise makes repetition all too simple, however Sylvan Esso has higher concepts.
“No Rules Sandy” is a pendulum-swing sequel to “Free Love,” the subdued, wistful album that arrived in September 2020, when pandemic stasis and isolation have been sinking in. “Free Love” contemplated, from a distance, the shared pleasures that have been as soon as taken without any consideration, with songs that longed to be, as one put it, “Shaking out the numb.”
In Sylvan Esso’s new songs, pleasure is again inside attain. “Sunburn” celebrates overindulgence — an excessive amount of solar, too many sweets — with a monitor punctuated by the comfortable pattern of a bicycle bell. “Didn’t Care” revels in an surprising romance with a euphoric mix of Afro-pop guitars, Balkan choral harmonies and bubbly synthesizers.
Sylan Esso hasn’t stayed remoted through the pandemic. Back in March 2021, it gathered fellow musicians round its North Carolina dwelling base and utterly reworked the digital tracks from “Free Love” for a hand-played, full-band livestream set, titled “With Love” — a reminder of live performance camaraderie. In September, the duo returned to touring. Still, “No Rules Sandy” seems like Sylvan Esso had ample time to idiot round within the studio.
There’s a spirit of try-anything, knob-twirling whimsy all through the brand new album, a willpower that any parameter can change at any time. The album’s watchwords are the chorus of “Your Reality,” a monitor that meshes syncopated, ambiguous synthesizer chords and a sighing string quartet: “Surreal but free — it’s your reality.”
Typical digital pop and dance music provide reassurance via predictability: an apparent and dependable beat on the underside, crisp verse-chorus-verse delineations for songs, or measured four-bar buildups resulting in anticipated payoffs in dance tracks. Sylvan Esso challenges all these expectations. Throughout “No Rules Sandy,” beats seem, fracture and immediately vanish and return; vocals are intimate and naturalistic one second, glitchy or multitracked or pitch-shifted the subsequent.
In “Echo Party,” Meath sings about “a lot of people dancing downtown,” with hi-hats and piano chords that trace at disco and home music. But the monitor craftily refuses to settle right into a membership groove. The sliding bass line slows right down to journey issues up (or out); later, the beat drops away utterly, leaving Meath on a looped a cappella syllable: “by, by, by.”
The tweaks maintain coming. “Look at Me” takes on the eye economic system — “All I want is to be seen,” Meath sings — with manufacturing suggesting a always pinging web; the rhythm is outlined nearly solely from above by pecking, tapping, booping, clicking offbeats. “Cloud Walker” glints out and in of a way of 4/4 and three/4, subdivided by the fibrillating cymbals of breakbeats, whereas Meath’s voice is overdubbed into chords as she sings about worry and acceptance: “learning disaster/relax in style.”
As that line suggests, “No Rules Sandy” is upbeat however not oblivious. “Everybody’s hearing along with me/the alarm the alarm the alarm,” Meath sings in “Alarm,” close to the tip of the album. For all of the enjoyable Sylvan Esso was clearly having within the studio, the music additionally displays simply how unstable the 2020s really feel. All the whizzing, zinging, twinkling, morphing sounds promise there are methods to deal with what’s coming at us.
The album’s last monitor switches up as soon as extra. “Coming Back to You” is an easy, folky ballad, strummed on acoustic guitar (although Sylvan Esso can’t resist including some filtered vocal harmonies). It guarantees a homecoming, a connection, a refuge: “I am the root, I am the leaf/I am the big tree you grew beneath,” Meath sings. After all of the movement, the tune provides a spot to relaxation.
Sylvan Esso
“No Rules Sandy”
(Loma Vista)
