New Music From Braids
Montréal-based indie trio Braids long-awaiting Shadow Offering has arrived via Secret City Records. Formed in 2007, the three piece band – Raphaelle Standell-Preston (lead vocals, guitar, keys), Taylor Bonner Smith (bass, guitar, percussion), and Austin Tufts (drums) – weaves organic and electronic elements together amidst a lyrical landscape that is intimate and emotionally immersive. Co-produced with Chris Walla of Death Cab For Cutie, the new album finds the band at their most personal, unabashedly flexing a new sense of confidence through songs that reach a higher level of artistry and collaboration. A luscious and expansive release, the LP presents with heartbreaking honesty and precision a sonic tapestry that brings listeners into a nuanced and complicated world full of beautiful contradiction. Although the album directs itself at the failures of people to love and be loved, it also seeks to restore justice and attain blissful union. The songs bubble, sustain, dissolve, grow, and retract and the album’s arc crests through the dark towards the light and learns how to dance with the dizzying rhythms of the heart.
“Just Let Me” explores the push and pull of a relationship, the narratives created between partners, and the inevitable hardships of love. According to the band, “The song was born of a desire to get through to one’s partner, to work through those feelings of complacency, stagnation, of pointless arguments; when you feel your partner, though sitting across the table from you, is further away than if they were not there at all.” Another standout from the record, “Snow Angel,” is a powerful opus that features vocalist Standell-Preston‘s most visceral performance to date as she leans passionately into her anger, diving deeper into frustrations and anxieties about her internal and external worlds. Lead single “Young Buck, an effervescent ode to impossible love that exudes an undeniable magnetism and found approval from the likes of Pitchfork, The Fader, MTV, and Consequence of Sound, and The New York Times has praised Standell-Preston’s “openhearted earnestness” on the track Eclipse (Ashley), while Stereogum named it “one of the best Braids songs ever, a power ballad built from cascading pianos, off-kilter rhythms, and a rising surge of atmospheric strings.” Our digital servicing includes the full album along with FCC Clean versions of two tracks.
“The Montréal-based indie art-rockers make an ethereal return, full of bold and beautiful sounds.” -DIY Magazine
“With effortless beauty, Braids have crafted a balm to combat the dark forces that cross us. To overcome the fears that plague us, the planets eclipsing our planetary bodies, the patterns that bind us, the anxiety that grips us, the heartbreak that breaks us.” -She Makes Music
FCC Warning: Track 6, “Fear Of Men,” Track 7, “Snow Angel.” Our digital servicing includes FCC Clean versions of these songs on tracks 10 and 11.
Recommended Tracks: Track 2, “Young Buck,” Track 3, “Eclipse (Ashley),” Track 4, “Just Let Me,” Track 11, “Snow Angel (Clean Edit)”
Label: Secret City Records
Going for adds 6/23
