Cedar Falls - Esla
(2013 Self-Released)
"Bathes a smattering of seemingly unrelated influences in shoegazey fuzz."
Here’s a release that takes me back to the origins
of the Half-Gifts music blog. I named the site after the fourth and final track
of the Cocteau Twins’ oft-overlooked 1995 EP called Twinlights. Though the band is most known for their ethereal (and
rather liturgical) take on dream-pop, the brief release relegates their usual
shoegazery to be a supplement to acoustic arrangements, and the dramatic change
in sounds pays off: though piano, acoustic guitar and strings are at each song’s
focus, the residual shimmer that brews in the background is what makes Twinlights so memorable. That background
effect is resurrected on Elsa, the
debut album by Long Island’s Cedar Falls. It takes cues from a smattering of
seemingly unrelated influences and bathes them in shoegazey fuzz and reverb
adding up to one gorgeous EP.
“There” is the first track to include vocals, which
hide among twangy, vaguely dissonant pluckings that recall Slint’s tinny guitar
tone on Spiderland. It’s nice, but
seems to be a bit of a buffer, countering the unchallenged beauty that circulates
through “Isolated Roads”, which channels Neutral Milk Hotel’s fuzz-folk. “Julia”,
however, is my personal favorite selection from Esla, and is perhaps the sleeper track of the bunch. The synths
that breathe life into the song sound like a slowed-down sample of Paul
McCartney’s “Simply Having a Wonderful Christmastime”. Declan Diemer’s vocals
have a surprisingly “pop” accent to them, a rather welcome inclusion on such a
mellow album.