Sound of Ceres' first album, 2016's
Nostalgia for Infinity, was a nice carryover from Ryan and Karen Hover's work with their shoegaze collective
Candy Claws. Using guitars, synths, reverb, and Karen Hover's helium-filled vocals, they cast a spell of sound and vision that floated like a warm breeze. Working quickly, the duo (plus collaborators Jacob Graham, Derrick Bozich, and Ben Phelan) soon started piecing together another album, this time with a theme revolving around outer space and
Thomas Mann's novel The Magic Mountain. Once they had the basic tracks and ideas in place, the Hovers and Graham decamped to Iceland to finish the record with producer Alex Somers, who was known for his work with
Sigur Rós and
Julianna Barwick, among others. Somers decided to strip almost all the guitars out of the mix while adding more more synthesizers, and the band went along with his idea. This deconstruction of the sound they had almost perfected on
Nostalgia makes
The Twin an interesting listen. If it were an album by a band other than
Sound of Ceres, the graceful melodies, icy soundscapes, and breathless vocals -- all put together with skill and vision -- would have been quite impressive. As
Sound of Ceres' second album it's still quite impressive, but it's hard not to be a little disappointed that they didn't expand their sound instead of stripping it down so much.
Nostalgia wasn't a guitar-heavy album by any means, but guitars were an important facet of the arrangements, enough so that their absence makes a big difference. That being said,
The Twin is still an enchanting album. The drifting midtempo rhythms, the chilly banks of vintage synths, Karen Hover's pixie-in-a-trance vocals, and the often beautiful melodies definitely cast a spell, and it's easy to feel like one is in a space capsule tumbling slowly through the stars as the record meanders along peacefully. Occasional songs with some forward momentum, like "The Trance," keep the album from getting too chilled out, but mostly this is an album made for introspection and floating, and the band does a fine job of providing a soundtrack for both activities. The lack of guitars and the overall chilliness of the album are hurdles that must be leapt over, but once that occurs it's easy enough to embrace the album for what it is instead of what it could have been. ~ Tim Sendra