Escape From Evil is exactly as its title would have you believe, then, the story of an artist facing her demons and exorcising them.
Hunter is a charismatic singer willing to deal in grand, sweeping gestures and also idiosyncratic specifics. Escape From Evil is a vivid world of queer retrofuturism, a wide open space that offers access the emotionality of the recent past without subscribing to its violence.
There’s a balance between climate and movement that, with some ‘80s pop/rock/post-punk guitar styles and Hunter’s dramatic singing style, recalls early Cure, Echo and the Bunnymen, and the darker side of New Order and other Factory Records releases.
Shades of Lower Dens' minimalist past appear relatively consistently throughout the album's just over-40-minute runtime, but they tend to materialize as breaths in between bigger pop moments; empty bridges with which to either populate or tear down.
Look past the pastel surface-level familiarity of Escape From Evil and you’ll find that no matter what tool-kit a band is equipped with, superb songwriting and refined attention to detail and aesthetics always prevail.
Hunter sounds like a hybrid of Annie Lennox and Beach House’s Victoria Legrand on a collection of songs that take a welcome detour away from Nootropics’s exploration of transhumanism and instead focus on simpler matters of the heart.
Escape From Evil finds the band exploring simpler, more efficient song structures, and it's the closest thing to pop music they've made yet.
Escape from Evil might not change the world, but it is all the more impressive because of its unexpected accessibility.
Escape From Evil is the most direct, and accessible album Lower Dens have yet made, augmenting their more experimental, Krautrock predilections with the buoyancy of brighter melodies while crafting nuanced, humanist pleas for compassion.
Lower Dens persist in their indelible aesthetic triumphs with Escape From Evil, another gleaming beacon of poise over posturing.
Escape from Evil is the kind of stuff that locks you into a haze without ever totally separating you from the outside world, and sometimes you need that kind of mental insulation.
Despite her voice remaining as resonant as it’s ever been, her weaker lines are plain and unbecoming set within this synthy milieu.
For the time being ... Escape From Evil feels like a case of one step forward, two steps back.
Very eighties synth influence that takes you back to The Cure, Cocteau Twins, Joy Division era. Highly reminiscent of Beach House.
Very eighties synth influence that takes you back to The Cure, Cocteau Twins, Joy Division era. Highly reminiscent of Beach House.
1 | Sucker's Shangri-La 4:57 | |
2 | Ondine 3:07 | |
3 | To Die in L.A. 4:12 | |
4 | Quo Vadis 3:35 | |
5 | Your Heart Still Beating 5:27 | |
6 | Electric Current 4:08 | |
7 | I Am the Earth 5:08 | |
8 | Non Grata 3:01 | |
9 | Company 4:33 | |
10 | Société anonyme 3:21 |
#8 | / | Gorilla vs. Bear |
#27 | / | Diffuser |
#48 | / | Drowned in Sound |
#55 | / | Under the Radar |