Web Of Sunsets – Chaos Waltz
You! Hey you! Life got you full of anxiety? Try Chaos Waltz, Web Of Sunsets’ new LP, the trio’s first on the Moon Glyph label and the follow-up to 2015’s Steel New Days. A super-chill record that defies you in the most hushed of tones to exit it more stressed than you enter, it really is the aural equivalent of a sensual head massage.
With all three members (Sara Bischoff, Sarah Nienaber and Chris Rose) splitting their efforts between song-writing, jangling guitar and turns on the mic, not to mention their being located 1700 miles apart in Portland and Minneapolis during its recording, Chaos Waltz is a surprisingly cohesive collection, each member successfully bringing their own similar – but different – ideas to the table. The result consequently sashays effortlessly from tranquil dream-pop, gently rippling piano melodies and sun-dappled synths that that lap at your toes like crystalline waters to hyper-intimate psych-folk acoustics, shuffling percussion patterns and the intangible drift of pedal steel’s ghost.
It’s all breathtakingly pretty to the point it makes you get all maddeningly possessive and want to protect its fragile slowcore embers and rustling breezes. Magnetic vocal parts, particularly towards the album’s close, then lead to deserved Mazzy Star comparisons too, pin-drop loveliness that’s laid-back in the extreme and downright delightful because of it. Chaos Waltz: more effective than Xanax and Valium guaranteed.
Best track: “Crimson”
~Chaos Waltz is out now via Moon Glyph.~