Music / new releases
New release: Mesadorm return with Comfort and Lies
Art-pop quintet and lifelong friends Mesadorm have broken their four-year long quietude with Comfort and Lies, their third album and, they say, their most “instrumentally simple”.
The record is described as “an exposition of a childhood” and broadly explores the acceptance of life as “a sea of feelings, memories, threads and stories that are constantly in myriad motion.”
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The band is fronted by Blythe Pepino, a musician and activist who founded the environmentally-driven BirthStrike campaign, and includes musicians that have performed with the Unthanks, Paloma Faith, Goldfrapp, Frank Turner and ZunZun Egui.
Scrutiny over that decision not to have children is picked over in album opener proper, the more strident Come On, Baby, with the album continuing in a personally reflective and sometimes hauntingly intimate vein.
The band’s sound has typically encompassed prog, jazz, synth and dream pop, while this new record embraces “classic song structures” that morph into “proggier sections” supported by the band’s characteristic emotive tone, shimmering synth and thoughtful instrumentation.
It was recorded at Real World and Geoff Barrow’s Invada studios, often capturing live jams that contribute “a sense of connection and spontaneity which sparkles”.
Lead single Soft Around the Edges features a foundational hard-edged driving beat supporting Pepino’s crystalline vocals and languid synths, with building emphatic bass and male voice choir-style vocals adding to a slowly simmering sense of urgency.
Mesadorm’s album tour takes in the Jam Jar in Bristol on July 3: thejamjarbristol.com/events#e150853
Main image: Mesadorm
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