44.1kHz


  Hood, Home Is Where It Hurts (Aesthetics): I'll admit to having forgotten almost entirely about indie-pop a couple of years ago; I've still got a shelf stacked high with Slumberland singles, but they've been gathering dust for ages. So it's nice to find that Wetherby mopers Hood have done only good things to their fuzzy, jangly sound in the time I've been away. The title track has it all: radiant washes of guitar, a crickety click-track, and best of all a breathy, overdubbed vocal style that just screams (well, ever so softly) "shoegazer." The way all these elements swirl around each other like leaves in a wind eddy, on "Home" and the sparkling "Cold Fire Woods of Western Lanes," seems calculated to conjure a kind of tumbledown nostalgia, but damned if it doesn't work wonders. "The World Touches Too Hard" sees Hood trying their hand at a dubbier, less psychedelic version of Boards of Canada's brand of melancholy, while the muted "It's Been A Long Time Since I Was Last Here" inches back toward the pastoral broodings of later Talk Talk before blowing away in a swirl of cymbals. — Philip Sherburne



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