Shifting stylistic gears from the rootsy wallop of her 2018 debut,
One Big Nothing, Australia's
Kaity Dunstan, aka
Cloves, pours herself into the digital alt-rock glow of 2021's
Nightmare on Elmfield Road. A loose riff on the classic '80s horror movie A Nightmare on Elm Street, the album finds
Cloves crafting a dystopian, claustrophobic pop landscape that feels intentionally like how a teenager in the '90s might've thought the future would sound. There's an arch theatricality to much of
Nightmare on Elmfield Road. Thankfully, much of the record works, and
Cloves commits entirely to her '90s final girl persona. Born in 1996, she obviously wasn't old enough to be aware of the alt-rock she's referencing on
Elmfield Road when it first arrived. Still, drawing upon such influences as
Garbage,
Kate Bush,
Portishead, and a lot of
Tori Amos, she manages to capture the techno-dread atmosphere of the '90s and early 2000s nicely while transforming it into something that sounds fresh. Collaborating with producers like
Clarence Coffee, Jr.,
Hudson Mohawke, Detonate, and others,
Cloves drapes her dusky head voice in clipped electronic beats, thick walls of piano, buzzy drone bass, and the occasional squelch of refracted guitar fuzz. Thematically, she riffs on the album's mental health/horror tropes throughout, offering up evocative song titles like "Manic," "Sicko," and "Grudge" -- mini aural horror movies born out of her innermost thoughts. Underlining this notion is a cheeky track called "And now a word from one of the many voices in my head saying something I won't remember later," which plays like a fake phone solicitation for an anxiety medication. While many of these songs have nice hooks -- "Sicko" even manages to slip in a nod to
Suzanne Vega's "Tom's Diner" --
Nightmare on Elmfield Road works best listened to as a whole, so the overarching tone of ominously sultry dread can really settle in. ~ Matt Collar