On their third album,
Dead Blue,
Still Corners pulled up their physical and musical roots, moving from London to the seaside to make epic pop songs inspired by the water's depths. For its follow-up, Greg Hughes and Tessa Murray change their surroundings and sound once again, this time even more dramatically: to make
Slow Air, the duo moved to the hill country near Austin, Texas.
Still Corners find just as much mystery in the region's rolling vistas and heat as they did in
Dead Blue's seascapes, but the way they express it is notably different. For much of the album, their signature synths take a back seat on
Slow Air's road trip through a sultry dream world of songs populated by characters vanishing into dusky nights -- or their own thoughts. The glistening acoustic guitar that opens "In the Middle of the Night" signals that the album is new terrain for the duo, while the midnight twang of "The Message" evokes
Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game." Elsewhere,
Slow Air calls to mind the work of
Widowspeak,
Mazzy Star, and, of course,
Stevie Nicks -- "Fade Out" could be a distant, synth-enhanced cousin of
Fleetwood Mac's "Rhiannon."
Still Corners spend most of the album distilling this languid poignancy into its most iconic forms, but just when it feels like
Slow is becoming sleepy, Hughes and Murray deliver some of its most riveting songs. On "Black Lagoon" and "Dreamlands," they reintroduce a little of
Dead Blue and
Strange Pleasures' synth pop, and the tension between the pristine electronics and smoky guitars feels like more than just an homage to their new location. There's a little of
Cocteau Twins'
Liz Fraser in Murray's low, sidewinding vocals on "The Photograph," a bittersweet tribute to moments that are just about to pass, while the open-ended "Whisper" suggests the duo haven't abandoned the experimental side that dominated their debut,
Creatures of an Hour, entirely. Some of
Still Corners' most intimate-sounding music,
Slow Air's finest moments feel less like they're adopting the customs of a new land and more like they're adapting them to what they do best -- capturing moods beautifully. ~ Heather Phares