Blonde Redhead - Penny Sparkle

Over seven albums and fifteen years, psych-pop trio Blonde Redhead have refined their darkly surreal music and, particularly with 2007's self-produced 23, found focus in the more spontaneously created songs that still remained awash in a sea of chiming guitar brush strokes and dense synthesizer layers. For Penny Sparkle (September 14, 4AD), recorded in Stockholm and their home base in New York, the trio opted for more guidance in the studio and handed the production reins to the team of Van Rivers and The Subliminal Kid (Fever Ray).

The result? After 23's internally directed and "intense" recording process, these new songs don't have quite the taut, efficient energy of their predecessors but they do stretch a bit in finding their own comfort zone, albeit a rather dark one (despite the album's title). For singer/bassist Kazu Mazino the creative process was something of a dreamscape experience. "I fell in love with the music like falling for someone you've known for a long time," she writes. "It was dreamy and sometimes was very stormy." To wit: the minor-chord majesty of "Not Getting There", a noir-ish bit of cantering percussion and Depeche Mode-ish synth foundation bubbling under Mazino's swirling, windswept vocals.

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Blonde Redhead - "Not Getting There" (from the album Penny Sparkle)

Blonde Redhead - "Here Sometimes" (from the album Penny Sparkle)

Photo Credit: Josh Rothstein