An experimental musician who studied audio production in college,
Briana Marela made a fresh start of sorts with her 2015 Jagjaguwar label debut,
All Around Us. An ambient pop record with a peculiar elfin quality and glitchy patina, it presented a bolder, more structured front than did her quieter and more exploratory early work. With the aid of co-producers Ryan Heyner and Juan Pieczanski from synth pop group
Small Black, she moves in the direction of a still less delicate, more percussive sound two years later on the follow-up,
Call It Love. Very much a sequel, it hangs onto the distinctive persona she established on that album.
Marela has explained that she started out with the intention of making a set of companion songs, with the more ambient tracks to be paired with poppier, danceable ones. Instead, she found the two styles merging. That's exactly the impression of the majority of the songs here, which mingle
Marela's wispy, sweet-like-frosting vocal delivery, plenty of echo, and sparkling synth textures with clanging percussion and sometimes pulsing, sometimes driving, full kit-type drums. A song like the opener, "Be in Love," starts out as the former type of song and turns into the latter, picking up an active rhythm section halfway through. Besides shifting energies within a song, a few of the tracks blend into one another sequentially, bridged by a shimmering murmur of electronics. They all connect to one another thematically around the notion of hopeful, if realistic affection. The album's tendencies toward being a little more streamlined and more beat-driven may make it more accessible to the neutral listener, but it still offers unexpected turns, impulsive rhythmic flourishes, and plenty of quirky timbres to keep things interesting ("pool field recording," timpani, a plethora of keyboards and synths, and even "ladder" are among the instrument credits). The giddy quality may stick more than do individual songs, but they succeed in capturing some of the wooziness of new love. ~ Marcy Donelson