Body Double Milk Fed LP
I had to mull over this one to get it and avoid jumping to easy conclusions. Ex-MANSION helmer Candace Lazarou has built ten warped and weary pop songs that evoke familiar notes of ’90s indie rock with industrial flourishes, pulsing guitars, and even momentary shoegaze walls of noise. It sounds like I’m describing a vintage wine or something, but the production on this is so dense and the lyrics so cryptic that it almost asks to be picked apart piece by piece. Like a problem you keep turning over in your head and can’t fully resolve. At its best it reminds me a bit of NICO’s Camera Obscura album where she sang “Show me the way to warning / Warning for the morning light / I will stab it with a knife / The blinding sun / The heartbeat for the time to come.” Lazarou flips this foreboding blade and light imagery with her own “I was born in a violet light / Sniffin’ sand off a paper knife / I was born with a gun in my face / I was born in outer space.” Am I overthinking this comparison? Maybe. But some people want music that’s awkward to access, that you puzzle over. That’s BODY DOUBLE.