A blurry mix of dance, in need of expansive mixing
Indie pop group, Sylvan Esso, surprised everyone with their live album performance at Newport Folk Festival this year. While subverting expectations with a new sound, their newest album, No Rules Sandy, lacks emotional connections to the electronic melodies clinging on to impactful lyricism. Folk singer Amelia Meath of Sylvan Esso stands above the blurry stacked production of the album, the folk beauty floats above the waves of uninspired electric tings and bass. Simply put, No Rules Sandy succeeds most when it highlights the engaging vocals Meath delivers rather than drowning them under a simplistic backdrop that is too dull to match Meath’s complexities.
With folk roots digging in the project doesn’t necessarily mean it leans heavily towards these sounds. “Echo Party” diverts the slow-tempo ballads into an upbeat house electronic mix, morphing Meath’s acoustic tones into new glitchy cuts, all of which bounce off each other with vibrance when matched with distortion and low bass. “Echo Party” along with “Didn’t Care” and “Sunburn” demonstrate Esso’s capability to logically morph Meath’s vocals into a fitting arrangement to the electronic production. “Didn’t Care” layers multiple samples of Meath with a variety of tones and pitches accompanied with drawn-out synths, “Sunburn” approaches Meath’s tones with a lower dramatic pitch that pair the heavier electronic drums. Sylvan Esso expands their catalog by demonstrating the capability of successfully creating dance anthems without sacrificing lyrical influence.
No Rules Sandy runs into problems within its similarity across its generic electronic components, this, paired with the needless addition of interludes, can push the album to indistinguishable style across songs. “Moving” and “Look At Me” are both held up by the pop vocals that soon collapse under the unmatched production of both tracks. “Moving” has a glitchy, rapid pacing, similar to that of a Freezepop instrumental, which displaces the stillness of Meath’s vocal performance.
No Rules Sandy’s closing track, “Coming Back To You,” ditches the unruly dance elements for an acoustic guitar. “Coming Back To You” is entirely disjointed from the album as a whole, sitting down for something intimate and sad, lyrics resembling an emotion of longing and remembrance. “Coming Back to You” stirs in emotion that was lacking in previous songs, not necessarily creating a feeling of closure, nor does it create a journey that it describes within its lyrics, however, its beauty in somber tones brings such devastation in an album that is anything but.
No Rules Sandy skips out on the emotional impact that could have been placed throughout the album and interludes, replacing substance for experimentation and genre mixing. At times, their success carves a repetitive chorus into minds, sometimes it just needs to skip a beat. Sylvan Esso could easily bring attention to elements outside of Meath’s captivating performance, just as easily as they can embrace the folk tones they so boldly capture at the end of the project.
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