Acopia’s melancholy digital pop is homespun, but it surely sounds luxurious. Melbourne musicians Kate Durman, Morgan Wright, and Lachlan McGeehan are all pedigreed digital producers in their very own proper; their work on this band is minimalist however purposeful, prizing drive and ambiance even when the music is at its sparsest. A solitary horn pierces the digital gloom on “We Evolve,” the opener of their self-titled second album, and it evokes the picture of vocalist Durman because the dame in a movie noir, looking onto a wet avenue for some shred of hope amid the gloom.
Acopia concentrate on songs about loneliness and isolation. All through, Durman sings as if she had been a ghost wandering among the many residing, her quiet, breathy voice usually mendacity like a layer of mist between ominous post-punk guitars and icy programmed drums. “Acopia” is a medical time period describing an incapability to deal with each day life, and the lyrics right here dwell as much as that moniker. On “Be Sufficient,” Durman drifts by means of a celebration scene, her lyrics an limitless stream of unanswered questions and pregnant pauses; on “Eyes Shut,” dissociation “seems like a drug” amid emotional strife. That is pop music for absentee mates and serial ghosters, the place the traces, “I take you with no consideration/It’s simply what I do, ooh” ring out like a singalong refrain.
Though that will sound ponderous on paper, Acopia is charged with rigidity. The band builds on its 2022 debut, Possibilities, a report of catchy, fragile songs set to altogether bolder and extra forceful manufacturing, by making all the things slightly extra muted. Acopia are certainly one of a handful of teams in Melbourne that clearly worships on the altar of HTRK, a band that looms giant in Australia’s experimental scene; on this report, Acopia well comply with their lead in stripping their sound right down to a whisper. This subtler palette yields a report that’s extra dynamic than Possibilities. “Eyes Shut,” the album’s centerpiece, breaks by means of the fugue state like a battering ram. Powered by unrelenting sub-bass and McGeehan’s thundering drumming, it feels just like the onset of the nervousness assault that’s been slowly constructing over the course of the report, a gradual suffocation.
Acopia are hardly alone in specializing in feel-bad digital pop, however they do really feel particularly 2020s of their outlook. Durman seemingly has each attainable ultra-therapized line in her arsenal—“I have to zoom out,” “Perhaps we might take it at my very own tempo,” “What’s your intention?”—and nonetheless appears to really feel completely horrible. Though songs like “Holding On” and “Intentions,” which recall traditional 4AD bands, nod to romantic melodrama, their lyrical issues are wan and banal: missed connections, miscommunications, listless interactions. Set in opposition to the band’s wealthy, nervy environments, this glazed-over, alienated tone makes for a report that’s each intimate and intense, dazed and direct—hardly a treatment for modernity, however one thing that makes it simpler to manage all the identical.
