By It’s our Bandcamp Picks of the Week, featuring Milk & Bone’s tried and true electropop record BABY DREAMER, and Kathryn Mohr’s nimble atmospheric album WAITING ROOM!
Milk & Bone – BABY DREAMER
Genre: Alt-Pop, Electropop
Favorite Tracks: “Two (2) Little Mountains,” “Hands Dirty,” “baby Getz”
On BABY DREAMER, Canadian electronic duo Milk & Bone plunge deep into the freedom of letting go with a batch of affecting songs. The EP is notably glossy, a product of refining their sound precisely with deeper, larger-than-life harmonies and arrangements. Each cut moves with propulsion, the sonic elements swirling around the ears like melted candy.
BABY DREAMER is both music for drifting from worry and empowering oneself emotionally. The synthpop soundscape in the opener “Two (2) Little Mountains” recalls the choppy, shuffling rhythms of Magdalena Bay’s cosmic pop. The flirtatious “Nectar” is aptly titled for its smooth, syrupy groove and words on embracing a significant other: “I’m holding onto you / You’re holding onto me.” “Hands Dirty” is where Milk & Bone’s newfound polished musical chops truly shine, its ending formed by the harmonious rallying cries of the duo—Laurence Lafond-Beaulne and Camille Poliquin—woven between sonorous synthesisers. That’s heard even more so in “baby Getz,” a cosmic utopia reminiscent of Oklou’s cozy dream pop. Then, the project closes out on a high with lead single “FORGONE,” a dark synthwave song about limerence. Milk & Bone’s triumphant and bold return is not one to skip over. Listen to the captivating BABY DREAMER EP on Bandcamp. [Dom Lepore]
Kathryn Mohr – WAITING ROOM
Genre: Experimental
Favorite Tracks: “Driven,” “Take It,” “Elevator”
For Kathryn Mohr, isolation is a place she finds solace within. On her past few albums, she mainly explored the weary emotions welling up underneath liminal spaces, heard through spikes of guitars and whirrs of electronic ambiance. On WAITING ROOM, she reaches further into these lonely, crooked spaces, bringing out even more atmospheric tendencies as a result.
There is a wandering captivation that lingers within Kathyrn Mohr’s experimental takes, throughout her melodies and textures, crafting allure amidst layers of solemn coos, burly guitars, and hushed recordings. On one hand, she gets to muster a PJ Harvey-esque spark on cuts like “Take It” and “Elevator,” wherein her sullen delivery glides across crackling guitars. Yet she also delves deep into haunted soundscapes where she experiments with how to accentuate a lonesome, discomforting tone. Whether that be on the smears of acoustics on “Petrified,” the lo-fi electronics of the title track, the overwhelming guitar rumbles on “Horizonless,” or the lilting coos on “Diver,” the record is driven by nimbleness.
This curious attribute also presents itself within Mohr’s poetry: The very first track brings in the question of what people do when they’re feeling discomfort. It’s explored across the album, presented through passing mentions of disillusionment, numbness, or even crumbling emotions, all of which ultimately impact love. Subtle devastation leads to that expression slowly becoming withered, a plaintive acceptance of parting ways and letting that love dissipate like a memory forgotten.
Pulsating, haunting, and somber are words that best describe WAITING ROOM, highlighting the experimentation that Mohr puts towards crafting atmospheric soundscapes that tiptoe between dreamlike and discomforting, revealing something numbingly bare, yet also subtly unnerving. Listen to it on Bandcampn. [Louis Pelingen]
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